“Always remember, you are the son of two proud nations,” Elan’s parents
tell him in Elan, Son of Two Peoples. After turning 13 and celebrating his
Bar Mitzvah in San Francisco, Elan, with his Jewish father and Native American
mother, travels to New Mexico to visit his Indian family. There, he reads the
Torah on the open mesa during Shabbat, goes exploring with his cousin, and
takes part in the Pueblo ceremony of becoming a man.
In The Whispering Town it is 1943 in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Anett
and her parents are hiding a Jewish woman and her son, Carl, in their cellar
until a fishing boat can take them across the sound to safety in neutral
Sweden. With the help of the baker, the librarian, the farmer, and her
neighbors, Anett keeps Carl and his mother safe even as Nazi soldiers search
her street for hidden Jews. With the Nazis closing in, and worried about Carl’s
safety, Anett thinks of a clever and unusual plan to get Carl and his mother
safely to the harbor on a cloudy night without the moon to guide them.
Why we love this book: The Whispering Town highlights a child's bravery and kindness in an often scary world. It's also based on a true story. On a moonless night in 1943, in
the small Danish fishing village of Gilleleje, the town’s citizens stood in
their doorways and whispered to their Danish neighbors directions to the
harbor.
In 1943, the Nazis took over the Danish
government; shortly after, they began to round up the approximately 8,000
Danish Jews and send them to concentration camps. The Danes, who viewed their
Jewish neighbors as full Danish citizens, hid Jews in their homes, in warehouses,
barns, hotels and churches. In secrecy, they secured boats to transport them
across the sound to neutral Sweden. As a result, most of Denmark’s Jews were
saved.