Bound To Stay Bound

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Booklist - 12/01/2008 Growing up in Germany in the 1950s, Peter is tired of his eighth-grade teacher droning on about the evils of anti-Semitism and all the bad things the Nazis did. He knows that the Holocaust happened, but why must he hear about it and feel guilty? He just wants to play soccer with his friends and think about the present. Then he discovers that he is adopted and that his birth mother was Jewish and died in a concentration camp. There are many plot contrivances as Peter finds secret files his loving Catholic adoptive parents have kept, including a picture of his birth mother. But the intensity of the issues, the blend of personal conflict and historical facts, and the young teen’s present-tense narrative will hold readers as Peter embraces his Judaism, attends synagogue, and confronts the prejudice that continues among classmates and adults. - Copyright 2008 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 01/01/2009 Set in Germany ten years after the end of World War II, Whelan’s latest historical novel explores with great insight the life of Peter, a thirteen-year-old boy who is sick and tired of hearing about the horrors of the Nazi regime and is unable to figure out what relevance it has to his own stable, happy life. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that there is something about his own past that his parents aren’t telling him; this, in juxtaposition with the terrible nightmares that have tormented him since he was a young child, leads him to snoop around in his mother’s things and discover that the parents with which he lives aren’t his birth parents. In time, Peter hears the vivid and heartbreaking tale of how Peter’s mother was working for the Red Cross, meeting trainloads of wounded soldiers at all hours of the day and night, when a Jewish woman, passing through the station on a boarded-up train car, shoved an infant child into her hands. At the core of Whelan’s novel is Peter’s deep existential ponderings, trying to figure out who he is when the world as he had thought he knew it turns upside down. Though the book could be stronger in demonstrating the effect of the truth on Peter, the story offers effective suspense in the mystery of Peter’s situation and a dramatic climax with the revelation of his origins. Fans of Whelan’s middle-school-aimed historical fiction (Summer of the War, BCCB 6/06) will definitely want to get their hands on this title, and its focus on a male protagonist brings a new dimension to Whelan’s oeuvre that may bring in new readers. HM - Copyright 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

School Library Journal - 03/01/2009 Gr 5–8— In Germany, in 1955, scars of the Nazi regime and anti-Semitism are still evident. When a school assignment includes researching a "good German" who opposed Hitler's government, Peter Liebig finds himself in a dilemna. He searches his parents' letters written during the war and finds a picture of a woman whose face he recognizes from his lifelong nightmares. Everything he has known about his family and upbringing is contradicted by his discovery that he is a Jewish boy, rescued and adopted by a woman working with the Red Cross when his biological mother was sent to Dachau. A conflict of emotions develops as Peter is angry and resentful yet still loves the parents he has known. At the same time he is disturbed by a sense of loyalty and a need to find out the true fate of his birth parents. Whelan's well-developed story line and characterization present a short, psychological drama of a boy struggling to come to terms with his past so that his future identity, be that Jewish or Christian, can be formed. Supporting roles of Peter's peers, as well as that of a new friend, a Holocaust survivor who helps him with gentle advice and a caring introduction to a Jewish environment, bring this boy's story full circle.—Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI - Copyright 2009 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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