I quite enjoyed this one. It was well written and provided an interesting look at something that I really didn't know a lot about. ( )

Written by Irene N. Watt , the book Escape from Berlin, published in 2014, is an omnibus edition of three stories, Goodbye Marianne, Remember Me, and Finding Sophie, that have been published previously.
The first two stories tell about Marianne Kohn, a young Jewish girl living in Berlin in 1938, the beginning of Hitler’s reign. Unable to keep her safe any longer and with her Jewish father in hiding, her Christian mother puts her on the first Kindertransport, a train filled with children traveling to Britain to be housed with foster families for the duration of the war. The third story tells about Sophie, another child who Marianne meets on the train.
I received this book through the Early Reviewers giveaway in LibraryThing. The three stories have received multiple awards since their initial publication, but they left me bored. I like to read books intended for middle schoolers and young adults, and find that in spite of my age, I can tremendously enjoy them if they are written well with realistic plots and interesting characters. I found this book to have none of those attributes. I couldn’t connect to Marianne – although in theory, the need to take children away from their families to safety and the fact that many of them never saw their families again, is one of many, many tragedies of Hitler’s horrific rule. But the author failed to elicit compassion and interest in the outcome. It serves as an historical anecdotal account of the Kindertransport program but offers nothing more. ( )

While this trilogy started out a little slow for me, I am really glad that I was forced, both by having accepted an Early Reviewer copy, and by having the entire trilogy in one volume, to finish it.

I realize that I had high expectations for the book, especially given that I read it right after "The Book Thief." Though they are similar in time, setting, and subject matter, they are quite different in terms of writing style, and that took me a little while to get into.

A non-autobiographical, fictional account of two girls on the Kindertransport written by a woman who also lived the experience, this is a lovely young-adult reading experience. The first-person narrative style allows for an exploration of the interior lives of children who felt especially powerless and lost, having been shuffled around by well-meaning adults who saved their lives but could not heal their wounds.

Source: (Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program.)

My Thoughts:
I really enjoyed this book. In the past we have taught about the Kindertransport in my class. However, I liked this much more than the book the county had picked for us. It gave us a realistic look into how children were actually treated. Those of us who have studied and taught about the life of a Jew during the times of the Nazis know that they had a lot of persecution to deal with. Many parents sent their young children off to England for safe keeping, never knowing if they would be seen again. They believed that the people taking in their children would treat them like they would their own. This was not always true. Many of them as you learn from the stories in this book wanted them for free labor, others saw them as traitors or demons. I felt for Marianne the main character of the first two stories. She is bounced around form one home to another. Mistreated, thrown out or forced to live in opposition to her religious upbringing. Sophia, the young girl Marianne meets on the train is treated much better. Her “Aunt Em” is a friend of the family and treats her as if she is a relative. There is very little written about this time and it is refreshing to find a book that does such a wonderful job of telling it, even though the story is historical fiction. This will be a great addition to my bookshelves at school. ( )

Coinciding with the 75th Anniversary of the first Kindertransport from Germany to the UK, Irene Watts has released a collection of three novellas dealing with two Jewish girls who took that first train ride on December 1st, 1938.

Marianne, 11, and Sophie, 7, haven’t yet met, but their lives as Jews in Berlin share many similarities. As Jews are ever more frequently the victims of public humiliation, looting and theft, strict segregation, and violence, their parents make the wrenching decision to send their daughters alone to the UK – hopefully to safety. These stories, told through the eyes of the girls, who make a lasting but brief connection on the train and don’t meet again until 7 years have passed, put us right into the heart of war-time London, where the girls must navigate homesickness, a new language, unfamiliar families, food rations, and the kindness (and sometimes cruelty) of strangers in their adopted country.

Though Marianne and Sophie are fictional, their stories are based on the author’s own experience as a child of the Kindertransport, as well as extensive research into the memoirs of other children saved by the Kindertransport. Their experiences are vivid – heartbreaking but full of the hope of young girls. Though certainly not an exact likeness, Watts’ manner of descriptive writing and the style of conversation the book’s characters share felt very reminiscent of the much-beloved Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery. Recommended historical fiction for upper elementary and young adult readers. ( )