Lisa's War

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Matas offers a powerful account of a young Jewish girl who fights back after the Germans invade Denmark in 1940. Lisa, 12, and her brother Stefan join the Danish resistance when the Germans invade Copenhagen. Stefan is deeply involved in the movement, undertaking missions to sabotage German-run factories, while Lisa and her friend Susanne distribute pamphlets published by the resistance. When Susanne's parents are killed by the Germans, Lisa, too, becomes as involved as Stefan. Over the three-year period that this book documents, thousands of Danish Jews must flee their country to save themselves; Lisa and Stefan risk their own lives helping hundreds of Jews escape safely to Sweden. Lisa describes her experiences in the first - person present tense, creating a potent immediacy. Through the riveting narration, the rising tension in the country is effectively conveyed. An unsettling, important novel. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)

School Library Journal

Gr 6 Up-- Lisa is 12 years old when the Nazis invade Denmark. Angered at her country's surrendering without a fight, Lisa and her family each join the resistance, doing their part for their country while trying to hide their activities from the others. Lisa starts with a small assignment of delivering some pamphlets (and finds that frightening enough), but by the end she is helping to organize a mass evacuation of Danish Jews to Sweden. As a counterpoint to Lisa's family's activist attitudes is her cousin Erik and his family, whose complacent ``it can't happen here'' attitude is shattered by Gestapo raids on Rosh Hashanah. Despite the dramatic plot, the characters (and therefore the book) never quite come to life. Readers may feel a chill of horror when Lisa's father describes a delivery room massacre which spares only the newborn infant, or pity Erik's parents when they are forced finally to face the reality that they've been denying for so long, but Lisa does not earn the emotional investment required to anchor the novel. Nathaniel Benchley's Bright Candles (Harper, 1974) is a much superior book dealing with the Danish resistance. --Susan M. Harding, Mesquite Public Library, Tex.