Review: Hitler’s Canary by Sandi Toksvig

This is my story.  It is my story of when the war came to Denmark in 1940.  The Second World War.  I can’t give you the whole picture of what happened; just what I saw and what people told me.  There are hundreds of personal stories from that time, but this is not one in which all Germans were bad and all Danes were good.  It didn’t work that way.  There were just some good people and some bad people and it wasn’t always easy to tell the difference.

(from Hitler’s Canary, page 14)

I was helping The Girl choose some books from the library for the summer reading program when I stumbled upon this book in the middle-grade reader section.  When I saw the title and learned that it was a novel about the Nazi occupation of Denmark told from the point of view of a young boy, well, I started reading it before I even left the library — and with only 191 pages, it took me only a matter of hours to finish.

In Hitler’s Canary, Sandi Toksvig incorporates her father’s experiences during World War II into the story of Bamse, the son of a theater actress and a painter.  He was 10 when the Nazis invaded his country in 1940, and he doesn’t quite understand the seriousness of the situation.  His mother’s personal dresser, Thomas, is frantic when he learns the Nazis have come; his mother spends the day trying on new hats; his father takes a wait-and-see approach; and his brother, Orlando, thinks it’s time to take a stand.  Bamse is straddling the boundary between child and man, and soon he and his best friend, Anton, who is Jewish, are helping Orlando with errands for the Resistance.  When the country’s Jews begin to be rounded up, Bamse and his family refuse to sit around and do nothing.

Hitler’s Canary is told in the first person from Bamse’s point of view, and Toksvig does a great job showing his internal conflicts, as he is torn between obeying his parents and working for the Resistance and not always knowing who is good and who shouldn’t be trusted.  There was more telling than showing in several chapters, and Bamse probably was the only well developed character, but that didn’t keep me from getting lost in the story.  Bamse’s mother, the actress, was a very interesting character, and her acting abilities took center stage in a nail-biting scene involving Bamse’s shady uncle, some hidden Jews, and the Gestapo.

The book focuses on the rescue of the Danish Jews from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kipper in 1943 and underscores the fact that not all Germans were evil people and not all Danes were willing to protect their neighbors.  Hitler’s Canary would be a great introduction to these events for the 10 and up crowd — it doesn’t provide graphic descriptions, but doesn’t sugarcoat events either.  It’s a quick, engaging read for adults, too, especially those interested in the WWII era.

Disclosure: I borrowed Hitler’s Canary from the library. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2010 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.