Friday, June 24, 2011

How Huge The Night by Heather Munn,Lydia Munn ~ review

How Huge the Night: A Novel

Product Details

  • Reading level: Young Adult
  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Kregel Publications (March 9, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 082543310X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0825433108

About the book:
Fifteen-year-old Julien Losier just wants to fit in. But after his family moves to a small village in central France in hopes of outrunning the Nazis, he is suddenly faced with bigger challenges than the taunting of local teens.
Nina Krenkel left her country to obey her father's dying command: Take your brother and leave Austria. Burn your papers. Tell no one you are Jews. Alone and on the run, she arrives in Tanieux, France, dangerously ill and in despair.
Thrown together by the chaos of war, Julien begins to feel the terrible weight of the looming conflict and Nina fights to survive. As France falls to the Nazis, Julien struggles with doing what is right, even if it is not enough-and wonders whether or not he really can save Nina from almost certain death.
Based on the true story of the town of Le Chambon-the only French town honored by Israel for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust-How Huge the Night is a compelling, coming-of-age drama that will keep teens turning the pages as it teaches them about a fascinating period of history and inspires them to think more deeply about their everyday choices.



My take on this book:
Whenever I read a historical fiction story that is based on true events I always love the fact that I am learning a bit about history that perhaps I might never really know alot about otherwise. With How Huge The Night the authors do an amazing job of weaving together fact and fiction, to transport us back to the days of WWII, seeing the events of the time thru the eyes of two teenagers Nina and Julian, while I knew at some point their stories would meld I wasn't sure how they would connect.

The characters in this story are completely believable and it is very easy to imagine the things that they are going thru. Julian is your typical teenager, he isn't a man but neither is he really a boy. He isn't really happy that his family left their home in Paris to move to the farm in southern France with his grandfather, he is dealing with issues such as trying to fit in at school, not to mention trying to get along with Benjamin the Jewish boy who has also moved in with his grandfather.
As Nina's father is lying on his deathbed he makes Nina promise that she will take her brother and leave Austria.For me their parts of their story was heart wrenching, and I found myself praying that they would be all right.

I found this to be a compelling story that has many lessons woven in. A coming of age story during a difficult time period where the characters display great courage faith and hope. While this book is geared toward young adults I would easily recommend it to older adults as well.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.


2 comments:

  1. Thank you for taking the time to read and review our book. I'm so very glad you liked it. One of the things I enjoyed about the process was weaving in the history and thinking of people (especially teens) learning history through story, especially since we focused in on an aspect of WWII that doesn't get as much airtime in American classrooms as (understandably) the US's involvement. I just find that stuff so fascinating, I love to share it!

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  2. Heather, I am so glad that you dropped by. I am a huge fan of historical fiction because once I am swept up into a story I often find myself wanting to ferret out more information about what actually happened during the period a story takes place.Authors such as yourself do such an amazing job of not only bringing history to life in the pages of your stories, but also weaving in inspirational life lessons.

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Your wonderful comments make my day, thanks for dropping by!