For three long years Samira Zidane and her mother have belonged to the French Resistance in Northern France.

The German Empire took control four years before, ruling with an iron fist. But now there is news that an Allied invasion is coming, to drive the Germans out of France once and for all.

Samira would be excited about it as the night has come for it all to happen. If only her mother hadn’t been caught and be in the hands of German soldiers.

Trying in vain to get someone to help her save her mother fails time and time again. Her fellow French and even the first Allied soldiers will not come to her aid, and desperate, Samira finally realises she is on her own.

Only she can save her mother now, against soldiers with rifles and machine guns, with a knife in her pocket that she is too frightened to use, and a stray dog at her side.

Whilst the Allied Forces hit the beaches of Normandy, the French hope against hope that they will finally be saved from the terror of German occupation.

Resist is a novella in Alan Gratz’s War series of books, portrayed through the eyes of a young French spy on the night of the Allied Forces Normandy landings.

Readers learn of tricks and diversions the Allied Forces used as they storm the beaches in Northern France, and what it was like from a French girl’s point of view, all as she worries for her mother’s life.

This book may be short, but it still packs a Gratz punch, as readers learn about another side of the Second World War. With action aplenty, Resist – A Story of D-Day shows parachuting soldiers coming from above, tanks thundering down roads and gunfire and explosions sounding all around.

Teamed with Alan Gratz’s novel Allies, this duo of books shows a snapshot of both sides of D-Day, 6 June 1944. 

Author – Alan Gratz

Age – 10+

(2025, Scholastic, War, Courage, Family, Action, Historical, Series, WWII, Second World War, D-Day, Allied Forces Invasion, Normandy, France, Beach Landings, Allies, Novella)