Code name Kingfisher

Liz Kessler is the well-known author of 23 books for children and young adults, including the popular Emily Windsnap series, and this one follows another novel about the Second World War: ‘When the world was ours’ though that was about her own father’s escape from the Nazis, and this tells a completely different story.

We follow two threads, which are eventually woven together. 12-year-old Mila and her sister Hannie, 3 years older, are growing up in Amsterdam in 1942, when the Nazis have been occupying the country for 2 years. The family is Jewish, and they all have to conform to the law, but life is getting more difficult, and Hannie, under the codename Kingfisher, begins to work for the Resistance, leaving Mila feeling left out.

The other story is set in the present, when Liv has just moved into Year 8, and her long-term friend Karly has started making snidey remarks and excluding her. Her grandmother, known as Bubbe, is sinking into dementia and is no longer the provider of lovely dinners and chocolate cake: eventually she has to go into a care home. When Liv’s teacher sets Family History as a project, with one person’s story as a focus, she is not sure where to start, until, when sorting out Bubbe’s possessions, she and her new friend Gabi find a box of letters, Hannie’s Diary and stuff about Mila and Hannie, all in Dutch, and, with the help of a translation app and fact-checking on the internet, they begin to work out a story of survival and courage.  Hannie’s Diary proves crucial to her understanding, as, of course we  realise, Mila has become Bubbe.

Liv has had to endure bullying from her former friend Karly and her cronies, but when in her presentation to the class she tells how Hannie had the courage to stand up to the Nazis, and that this has helped her to realise that she doesn’t have to be defined by other people who try to put her down: she can be what she wants to be.  The class applauds loudly, Karly apologises, and is forgiven.