It feels like nothing can measure up to it, but that is not the case here. Often a sequel fails in satisfying a reader, because the first book was so good. Their adventures are impressive and frightening the dangers are real as is the innocence of the children. The menacing man in the truck, obviously a Nazi sympathizer, is not–he hides Jews. The wife of a German soldier becomes their surrogate mother her husband, a German soldier, becomes a deserter who hides in the hole in the barn floor that Felix had dug for Zelda to hide. Throughout all their adventures, Felix compares their plight to what happens in a favorite book of his, but this isn’t fiction, it is their lives. The reader must accept Felix’s and Zelda’s naiveté to accept the premise of the book, which has several topsy-turvy events that defy the reader’s expectation. Felix, in his naiveté, is trying to find his parents, in order to warn them not to buy Jewish books because the Nazis don’t like them.

Zelda sobs loudly and the Nazi soldiers glare up the hill and start shooting.įor the rest of the book, they have encounters with various characters, including the son of the matron who ran the former orphanage and now lives in the woods, part of the Resistance. Instead, they find a pit in the ground with the tangled up bodies of children, some younger than Zelda. Felix, who is ten, adores her as if she was his little sister, and does his best to save both their lives and to keep her quiet, telling her stories about finding kind homes in the wood. He also has to worry since Zelda has a bad habit of yelling obscenities at Nazis.

Felix and Zelda jump off a train on its way to a Nazi death camp their friend Chaya is killed in the process and the children bury her, leaving little 6 year-old Zelda with her short legs and wearing only slippers, less strength to keep up with Felix as he drags her up the hill and into the woods beyond, before a Nazi train, carrying Jews to camps, comes with machine guns on the roof and soldiers who would shoot at them. This sequel picks up immediately from where ‘Once’ finished.

Once & Then by Morris Gleitzman