It’s difficult to decide who might be the reader of this book. It certainly looks like a children’s picture book but isn’t suitable for the pre-school reader. Even if you shared it with a child who is learning about the Holocaust at school (Key Stage 3, Year 9?) this may not meet the right reader; the story is about adults, not children. Yet the story is simply told.
There is a note form Michael Rosen at the end and a short biography of both him and the illustrator Benjamin Phillips.
The book is meant to bring some hope. The main characters survive the Holocaust but it isn’t easy.
The emphasis in the illustrations is on the worried faces of people who are mainly beige and grey.
Father and son in the story help build a tunnel from a camp but they get caught. They eventually escape by getting help with removing the bars form a slowly travelling cattle truck and jumping to freedom. However, they get separated; the father is knocked out as he lands but he is helped by some farmers who thereby put their own lives at risk. Father and son meet again in Paris.
This works exactly as a picture book for younger children with more story in the pictures.
Perhaps we need to become like French readers and value picture books for adults.
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