Intermediate (ages 9-14)

Material appropriate for intermediate age groups

The Faithful Spy

Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party is gaining strength and becoming more menacing every day. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor upset by the complacency of the German church toward the suffering around it, forms a breakaway church to speak out against the established political and religious authorities. When the Nazis outlaw the church, he escapes as a fugitive. Struggling to reconcile his faith and the teachings of the Bible with the Nazi Party’s evil agenda, Bonhoeffer decides that Hitler must be stopped by any means possible!

The Fox Girl And The White Gazelle

Reema runs to remember the life she left behind in Syria. Caylin runs to find what she’s lost. Under the gray Glasgow skies, twelve-year-old refugee Reema is struggling to find her place in a new country, with a new language and without her brother. But she isn’t the only one feeling lost. Her Glasgwegian neighbor Caylin is lonely and lashing out. When they discover an injured fox and her cubs hiding on their estate, the girls form a wary friendship. And they are more alike than they could have imagined: they both love to run. As Reema and Caylin learn to believe again, in themselves and in others, they find friendship, freedom and the discovery that home isn’t a place, it’s the people you love.

The Sound of Freedom

Life is becoming dangerous for the Jews of Krakow in 1936 with incidents of violence and persecution increasing day by day. Twelve-year-old Anna begs her father to leave Poland, but he is reluctant to give up his position as an acclaimed clarinetist in the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra. After barely escaping from an attack by a group of violent thugs, it becomes clear that the family must leave. Anna’s father auditions for the famous Bronislaw Huberman, a world renowned violinist, who is searching for Jewish musicians to play in a new orchestra in Palestine. This poignant story is based on real events in pre-war Poland and Palestine. After saving 700 Jews and their families, Bronislaw Huberman went on to establish what later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Voices From The Second World War

The Second World War was the most devastating war in history, resulting in up to eighty million deaths and causing the map of the world to be redrawn. Now, more than seventy years after peace was declared, a variety of people who lived through the war share their memories with children so that their experiences will never be forgotten. In this compelling collection, pilots, evacuees, resistance fighters, and navy sailors, as well as survivors of the Holocaust, prisoners-of-war camps, and the Hiroshima bombing, tell their stories, passing on their personal recollections of historical events to a new generation. The stories in Voices from the Second World War were collected by children from all over the world who met with people who wanted to share experiences from the war. These stories, which take place from the outbreak of war to the Hiroshima bombing, capture the spirit and courage of a generation of people affected by World War II.

A Story Like The Wind

As a group of refugees huddles together in a rubber dinghy, one of them uses his violin to weave their stories together and give them hope for freedom in the future.

Featured in WOW Review Volume XI, Issue 3

Dodger Boy

In 1970 Vancouver, thirteen-year-old Charlotte and her best friend, Dawn, are keen to avoid the pitfalls of adolescence. Couldn’t they just skip teenhood altogether, along with its annoying behaviors – showing off just because you have a boyfriend, obsessing about marriage and a ring and matching dining-room furniture? Couldn’t one just learn about life from Jane Austen and spend the days eating breakfast at noon, watching “People in Conflict,” and thrift-store shopping for cool castoffs to tie-dye for the upcoming outdoor hippie music festival? But life becomes more complicated when the girls meet a Texan draft dodger who comes to live with Charlotte’s Quaker family. Tom Ed expands Charlotte’s horizons as they discuss everything from war to civil disobedience to women’s liberation. Grappling with exhilarating and disturbing new ideas, faced with a censorship challenge to her beloved English teacher and trying to decode the charismatic draft dodger himself, Charlotte finds it harder and harder to stick to her unteen philosophy, and to see eye to eye with Dawn.

Swallows Dance

Leira is about to start her initiation as a priestess when her world is turned upside down. A violent earthquake leaves her home – and her family – in pieces. And the earth goddess hasn’t finished with the island yet. With her family, Leira flees across the sea to Crete, expecting sanctuary. But a volcanic eruption throws the entire world into darkness. After the resulting tsunami, society descends into chaos; the status and privilege of being noble-born are reduced to nothing. With her injured mother and elderly nurse, Leira must find the strength and resourcefulness within herself to find safety.

After Life

Why do we die? Why can’t we live forever? What happens to us after death? Moving between science and culture, After Life: Ways We Think About Death takes a straightforward look at these and other questions long taboo in our society. By showing the fascinating, diverse ways in which we understand death, both today and throughout our history, the book also shines a light on what it is to be human. Each chapter includes a brief telling of a death legend, myth or history from a different culture or tradition, from Adam and Eve to Wolf and Coyote, and ends with a section on a common theme in our thinking about death, such as rivers and birds in the afterlife, the colors that different cultures use to symbolize death, and, of course, ghosts. The final chapter is about grief, which is both a universal human experience and unique to each person. The text offers suggestions for ways to think about our grief, when to ask for help and how to talk to friends who are grieving.

Too Young To Escape: A Vietnamese Girl Waits To Be Reuited With Her Family

After the end of the Vietnam War, Van wakes up one morning to find that her mother, sisters, and brother are gone. They have escaped the new communist regime that has taken over Ho Chi Minh City for freedom in the West. Van is too young–and her grandmother too old–for such a dangerous journey by boat, so the two have been left behind. Once settled in North America, her parents will be able to sponser them, and Van and her grandmother will fly away to safety. But in the meantime, Van is forced ot work hard to satisfy her aunt and uncle, who treat her like an unwelcome guest. And at school she must learn that calling attention to herself is a mistake, especially when the bully who has been tormenting her turns out to be the son of a military policeman.