By Robert Elmer

Denmark spent most of WWII under occupation by Nazi Germany. Though they had some amount of autonomy, it was still common to see Nazi soldiers all over the place. For Peter and Elise, this is fairly normal. After all, it has been this way for a while. Their lives are mostly normal, school, home, flying their passenger pigeons with their best friend Henrik, and working on their boat with their Grandfather. Of course they resent the Nazi presence, but there’s nothing they can do about it.

That is, until an order is sent out that all the Jews are going to be rounded up and taken away. This is especially a problem for Peter and Elise as their best friend, Henrik, is Jewish. They must help him escape the Nazis and flee to safety, but it seems like everything is going wrong. In the midst of all the chaos, Peter and Elise must put their faith in God to protect and care for them and their friends and family.

Why should you read this book?

During Covid, my dad got this entire series on kindle for my brother and me, and we read all of the books in probably two weeks. We kept on checking in with each other on where we were at and discussing what was going on. We were still young enough that we would play pretend outside, so that summer we were “Peter and Elise running away from the Nazis”. We loved these books so much.

One of the best parts of these books is that it’s not one of those series where the first one or two are good and then everything goes downhill. No, this was consistently good. Each book was different and genuinely fun to read.

If you like WWII fiction and sibling stories, you will like this book. And the best part is that if you like this book, there are 7 more.

Who should read this book?

As always, when a book is set in a Nazi-occupied country, there is the potential for lots of bad things to happen. And yes, bad things do happen in these book, and they do happen to children sometimes. There is violence, and characters do get hurt. But none of it is graphic, and it is not disturbing or very upsetting. 6th graders would be fine reading this book.

General Stats:

• Genre: historical fiction – WWII
• Book 1 of 8
• Age: 6th grade and above
• My rating:  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★