The Boy Who Dared

From School Library Journal Grade 6–9—In the newly formed Third Reich, Hitler's initial political doctrine is filled with hopeful solutions for a country plagued with unemployment, poverty, and a post-World War I feeling of defeat. Propaganda and promises quickly turn to oppressive new laws including the required participation in the Hitler Youth. Helmuth Hübener enters the program and is at once impressed with the bravado, shiny uniforms, boots, and patriotic fever sweeping the country. But his Mormon-based teachings trigger questions in his mind about the reality behind the regime's invasions of neighboring countries, mistreatment of Jewish citizens, and closely controlled media. He creates an underground newsletter with information gathered from BBC reports using an illegal shortwave radio. As he secretly distributes the flyers throughout the town, his boldness encourages him to gather several accomplices resulting in his arrest, trial, and execution. The novel opens as he is on death row, and the story is told as a series of flashbacks. Helmuth is portrayed as a brave, outspoken voice amid a family of acquiescing brothers, mother, and new SS stepfather. Based on a real person, the novel includes black-and-white photos of Hübener and his family. Bartoletti offers another perspective on the Holocaust, demonstrating that even if the effort proves unsuccessful, the courage and convictions of a minority should be motivation to speak the truth rather than remain silent. It's a message that must be continually emphasized as a lasting legacy of the Holocaust.— Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* In Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, Booklist’s 2005 Top of the List for youth nonfiction, 2005, Bartoletti included a portrait of Helmuth Hübener, a German teenager executed for his resistance to the Nazis. In this fictionalized biography, she imagines his story as he sits in prison awaiting execution in 1942 and remembers his childhood in Hamburg during Hitler’s rise to power. Beaten and tortured to name his friends, he remembers how he started off an ardent Nazi follower and then began to question his patriotism, secretly listened to BBC radio broadcasts, and finally dared to write and distribute pamphlets calling for resistance. The teen’s perspective makes this a particularly gripping way to personalize the history, and even those unfamiliar with the background Bartoletti weaves in–the German bitterness after World War I, the burning of the books, the raging anti-Semitism––will be enthralled by the story of one boy’s heroic resistance in the worst of times. A lengthy author’s note distinguishes fact from fiction, and Bartoletti provides a detailed chronology, a bibliography, and many black-and-white photos of Helmuth with friends, family, and members of his Mormon church. This is an important title for the Holocaust curriculum. See the Booklist interview with Bartoletti, in which she discusses how this teen’s story moved her. Grades 6-12. --Hazel Rochman Awards and Praise for The Boy Who Dared :A YALSA Best Book for Young AdultsA Booklist Best Books for Young AdultsA Booklist Editors' ChoiceA 2009 Notable Book for a Global SocietyAn NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People * "The teen's perspective makes this a particularly gripping way to personalize the history, and even those unfamiliar with the background... will be enthralled by the story of one boy's heroic resistance in the worst of times... This is an important title for the Holocaust curriculum." -- Booklist , starred review"[An] inspiring tale of conscience and courage." -- Kirkus Reviews "Bartoletti offers another perspective on the Holocaust, demonstrating that even if the effort proves unsuccessful, the courage and convictions of a minority should be motivation to speak the truth rather than remain silent. It's a message that must be continually emphasized as a lasting legacy of the Holocaust." -- School Library Journal "A stirring tale of one young man's resistance to a government he came to regard as evil... The character development, based on research and interviews with those who knew Helmuth, is solid, and the author excels in creating a sense of immediacy in the setting. Her Nazi Germany is a place that is hauntingly familiar, enveloped in a government-fed sense of fear in this welcome addition to a body of literature begun with Anne Frank's diary." -- VOYA "Bartoletti accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of building dramatic tension in a story whose outcome we know from page one. Helmuth s questioning voice lives on in the pages of this compelling work." -- Cooperative Children's Book Center , recommendedReturning to material she uncovered while researching Hitler Youth, Bartoletti offers a fictionalized biography of Helmuth H\u00fcbener, a Hamburg teenager who, in February 1942, was arrested for writing and distributing leaflets that denounced Hitler. Almost nine months later, on October 27, at the age of 17, H\u00fcbener was executed for treason. Opening her story on H\u00fcbener's last day, Bartoletti frames the work as third-person flashbacks, casting over the narrative a terrible sense of doom even as she escalates the tension. She does an excellent job of conveying the political climate surrounding Hitler's ascent to power, seamlessly integrating a complex range of socioeconomic conditions into her absorbing drama of Helmuth and his fatherless family. The author also convincingly shows how Helmuth originally embraces Hitler. His disillusionment seems to come a little too easily; American readers may wonder why Helmuth's reactions were not more common. But that question resolves itself as the author exposes the chilling gap between her own admiration for her subject and reflections, discussed in an afterword, from those who knew Helmuth, as in this comment from his older brother: \u201cHe should have known better than that.... A sixteen-year-old boy cannot change the government.\u201d Ages 11-up. (Feb.) — Publishers Weekly, February 11, 2008 Susan Campbell Bartoletti is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of many fiction and nonfiction books for children. Her fiction includes the novels The Boy Who Dared , Dear America: A Coal Miner's Bride , and No Man's Land , as well as a number of picture books. She won the Newbery Honor for her nonfiction book Hitler Youth . A former eighth-grade teacher for 18 years, Bartoletti now writes full-time and lives in Pennsylvania with her family. Read more