FICTION for years 7-9 RESOURCES

Waiting for the Storks by Katrina Nannestad

I don't want to remember the truck, or the night I was taken, or the family I left behind. I am not a sad Polish girl. I am a good and happy German girl.

I am. I am. I am.

It's the Second World War and Himmler's Lebensborn Program is in full flight when eight-year-old Zofia Ulinski is kidnapped by the Germans. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, just like the other Polish children taken from their families and robbed of their names, their language, their heritage.

But when Zofia is adopted into a wealthy and loving German family, it is easier, it is safer to bury her past, deep down, so everything is forgotten. Until the Polish boy arrives.

And the past comes back to haunt her.

Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief by Katrina Nannestad

Wood splinters and Mama screams and the nearest soldier seizes her roughly by the arms. My sister pokes her bruised face out from beneath the table and shouts, 'Run, Sasha! Run!'

So I run. I run like a rabbit.

It's spring, 1942. The sky is blue, the air is warm and sweet with the scent of flowers.

And then everything is gone.

The flowers, the proud geese, the pretty wooden houses, the friendly neighbours. Only Sasha remains.

But one small boy, alone in war-torn Russia, cannot survive.

One small boy without a family cannot survive.

One small boy without his home cannot survive.

What that small boy needs is an army.