“I think about a story mom read me when I was little. About a field mouse who was going to be killed by a dragon. Instead of cowering in the dry leaves, the mouse decided to look death in the face.

I bet mom and dad did that when the Nazis murdered them in the death camp.

It’s what I decided to do if the Nazis murder me. Keep my eyes wide open and look death in the face like mom and dad did.”

Felix’s monologue about imminent death reveals the mindset that Jewish Europeans held in the latter stages of World War II, when they fully understood that the Nazis meant to exterminate everyone of Jewish heritage. Unable to fight back, with roots of escape seemingly cut off, they were very much like the field mouse that Felix’s mother describes. Such fables were a source of power to people who were in extremely powerless positions. Over the course of Gleitzman’s series, so many innocent people in Felix’s life are arrested or killed by the Nazis that he understands that he might meet the same fate at any moment.

“I’ve thought of a way to save Gabriek and I need to do it before it’s too late.

[…] All my other ideas involve unarmed combat and avalanches and forest fires. I’m not very good at those things because you don’t get much chance to practice them in a hole.

So I’m going to use something I am good at.

A story.”

Despite the surreal circumstances of his life, like any other 13-year-old, Felix Salinger dwells in a world where imagination and fantasies blend with reality. This passage also reveals his valor, as he follows a band of armed men whom he assumes to be Polish secret police in league with the Nazis. While no rational adult would believe the absurd story that he concocts in his effort to save Gabriek Borowski, Felix grasps that he has no other way to save the life of the one who has concealed him for two years.

“One of the partisans, who I think must be the leader because he’s the only one not loaded down with Nazi guns, comes over to us. He stares at me as if he’s making a difficult decision. I get the feeling he’s a man who has to make a lot of difficult decisions. Such as killing a kid who might not be able to keep his mouth shut.”

Pavel, the partisan commander whom Felix describes here, is deciding whether or not to kill Felix. Because he has seen the partisans at work, Felix has become a liability to them—a person from whom the Nazis could extract important information. Thus, Pavel must weigh the risks involved in letting Felix live. This is one of the realities of all-out war that the author illuminates: the possibility that each side might inflict intentional collateral damage.

“Gabriek must have gone into the house because there are things inside that are even more precious to him than a really strong and loyal workhorse.

Genia things.

[…] I beg Richmal Crompton to give Gabriek and Dom the strength to survive the heat and smoke.

Me too.”

Rather than praying to God, Felix prays to the British author Richmal Crompton throughout most of the narrative. Richmal Crompton’s adventure books provided him with a reliable source of solace and companionship while he hid beneath Gabriek’s barn, and his attachment to the author reflects the power of this imaginary connection. This passage also demonstrates the desire felt by civilians in a war-torn land to cling to seemingly small mementos and reminders of prewar life, such as keepsakes from Gabriek’s wife and stories of valiant fictional heroes. To hang onto these personal remembrances, people risk their lives.

“As we trudge I keep myself pressed against Dom’s side to get some of his warmth. Dom doesn’t mind. He can see my coat is thin and torn and too small. He is a very kind horse.”

In addition to attributing spiritual power to Richmal Crompton, Felix actively personifies Dom, the powerful workhorse, often interacting with the horse in such a way that it is clear he attributes insight and active intentions to the horse. Throughout the narrative, the boy and horse appear to protect and provide for one another. However, Gleitzman also demonstrates the pragmatic issues associated with caring for a large animal during wartime, for Felix’s possession of the horse renders him even more vulnerable to theft on the part of other starving civilians.

“Her headscarf came off with the shirt. Her head is shaved. Her blonde hair is so short it’s almost like dandelion fluff.

The only women I’ve seen with shaved heads are Jewish women after the Nazis have captured them.

I probably shouldn’t ask, but I can’t stop myself.

‘Are you—?’

‘Lice,’ she says. ‘They like long hair so I don’t give them the chance.’”

In the absence of Gabriek, who had hidden and provided for him for two years, Felix bonds with Yuli, the partisan girl of Russian heritage who fights with the Polish partisans. Her few, slight kindnesses to Felix signal to him that she should be trusted. Other characteristics—that she smells like his mother, that her head is shaved like captive Jewish women, and that she is only a few years older than Felix—heighten the bond he feels toward her. Their relationship is ironic in that it is comprised both of tenderness and affirmation as well as the realities of war, such as Yuli’s determination to teach Felix the most efficient way to kill someone.

“It’s an awful sight. Jewish people, hundreds of them, thin and pale and ill, are struggling to walk along the lane while Nazi soldiers prod them and hit them.

The poor Jewish people must be freezing. Their clothes are in tatters. The biggest piece of clothing some of them have one is the patch of cloth the Nazis make them wear with the Jewish star on it.”

Hiding in a ditch alongside the road, Felix watches Nazi soldiers force Jewish captives to march. Though he has an idea of their destination—the sort of death camp his parents went to several years before—he does not grasp the portents of what is happening. As the author reveals later in the narrative, when the tide of World War II turns decisively against the Nazis, they resort to destroying everything and everyone as they retreat. One aspect of that pattern is executing every Jewish person they can. For those in Felix’s position at the end of the war, each day of survival is a victory.

“They seem to like each other.

That’s good. Maybe they’ll become friends. Maybe they’ll even fall in love. If they do, maybe they’ll let me stay with them.

OK, my imagination’s getting carried away, but when you can’t help imagining that sort of thing when you know you’ll never see your real parents again.

[…] One of the men in Doctor Zajak’s bunker told me that partisans aren’t allowed to get married. They get shot if they do.

Which is a shame.

Because if Gabriek and Yuli did want to become my new parents, I’d like that.”

Felix copes with the surreal realities of war by creating multiple layers of fantasy, such as imagining that Gabriek and Yuli will fall in love, marry, and become his new parents. Even his knowledge that partisans who marry each other are subject to execution does not deter him from dreaming, even though he has been told that such intimate relationships are viewed as a liability in wartime and are not tolerated. Like any group of warriors facing imminent battle, the partisans realize that any relationship might end instantly and tragically, and they cannot afford to let their fighters indulge in relationships that might distract from the dangers of the moment or impair someone’s judgment.

“‘You’re staying here,’ he says. ‘Zajak needs an assistant.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m going with Gabriek.’

Mr. Pavel looks at me and even before he speaks I can see that nothing will change his mind. It’s probably why he’s the leader.

‘You’ll obey my orders,’ Mr. Pavel says to me quietly. ‘Or I’ll shoot you.’”

In a single chapter, Felix is threatened with death three times: once from Pavel, once from Szulk, and once—as a caution—from Yuli. In the same chapter, the camp physician, Zajak, tells Felix that he is essential, that he has a “surgeon’s hands,” and must stay to help treat the wounded. Because Felix yearns to leave with the gravely wounded Gabriek, he plots around the warnings and ignores the doctor’s high compliment. As the protagonist blatantly disregards these threats against his life, Gleitzman implies that Felix has faced death and the exigencies of war so often that these grave concerns have become much less important to him than being with and caring for the man who effectively is his savior and surrogate father.

“I see the bottle of vodka on a shelf, grab it and hand it to doctor Zajak. Salt and vodka must help stop wounds getting infected. I asked Gabriek once why he drank so much vodka and he said it was to stop things festering inside him. I thought he just meant feelings, but perhaps he meant germs as well.”

In the scenes describing Felix in the operating room with Dr. Zajak, the author captures the confusion, urgency, and improvisation that occur when trying to save wounded soldiers with limited means and abysmal working conditions. Though only 13, Felix shows a gift for intuiting what Zajak needs and quickly learns what items and treatments to use in given situations. Later this comes in handy in the concentration camp when Felix tries to save the lives of people who have been liberated yet are still dying. His comment about vodka killing not only germs but unwelcome emotions is intended to demonstrate the boy’s bleak recognition that some wounds cut far more deeply than physical trauma.

“‘Snow makes our missions more dangerous,’ says Yuli. ‘But we have to fight even harder now. The Nazis are retreating from the Russians in the east, and soon there’ll be more of them in this part of Poland.’”

In this chapter, devising a plan to escape the partisans’ forest camp—so that he can get to the main partisan camp where Gabriek is recovering—dominates Felix’s thoughts. Here, Felix discovers multiple new layers of complexity that will impact his intentions. The falling snow causes Felix to realize that it will be more difficult to conceal his and Dom’s footprints as they search for the main camp. Also, the Russians enter the story for the first time. The advancing Russian troops force more Nazis into the region where the partisans fight, placing Felix and the others in even greater danger. Before the narrative ends, Felix will have faced imminent death at the hands of the Nazis, the Polish partisans, the Russians, and the Allies.

“Yuli rummages in one of the sacks and pulls out a thick coat. She throws it to me.

I stare at it, and at the other clothes spilling out of the sack. Clothes the Nazis stole from murdered people. I don’t feel good about this.

[…] ‘If you were dead,’ she says, ‘would you mind if your coat was keeping somebody else warm? Somebody who was fighting the people who killed you?’

I think about this.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t.’”

The presentation of a heavy coat, which he desperately needs, is particularly ironic to Felix. He realizes that the coat and other items have come from people who died in a Nazi death camp—people like his parents, and potentially himself, who are Jewish. Yuli’s insightful question allows Felix to understand the necessity of accepting this strange bequest from his people. Over the course of the narrative, possessions that the partisans took from the Nazis, who had taken them from Jews in the death camps, are used multiple times by Felix to provide for others, often allowing him to save lives.

“I flopped down onto the straw. I take my compass out of my pocket and stare at it.

Maybe This is why Gabriek gave it to me. Maybe he’s had enough of the risk and danger of looking after me. Of the years of stress trying to keep a Jewish kid alive in a world full of Nazis.

Maybe he’s decided he doesn’t want me around anymore, and I have to find my own way.”

Having waited for many weeks in the partisans’ forest camp for the return of his surrogate father, Gabriek, Felix learns that Gabriek has gone north with other partisans to attack elements of Nazi infrastructure. Felix feels betrayed and believes that his friend has lied about returning. Here the author reveals the disadvantages of living in an imaginary world, for Felix applies childlike rationalizations to situations beyond his understanding. While imagining fanciful things may provide momentary consolation, the boy must inevitably weather disappointment and despair when the real world bursts in, dashing his fanciful, deeply held hopes.

“‘Look at those scum,’ mutters Yuli. ‘Looting for themselves.’

I know what she means. In a history lesson with Gabriek once, I learned what retreating armies usually do. They destroy stuff so the other side can’t use it, and they loot for themselves.

Of course. I should have realized [sic].

That’s probably why the Nazis burned our farm.”

Throughout the narrative, the author demonstrates that the imminent defeat of the Nazis is no less dangerous for civilians than the war itself. He portrays the retreating Nazis as particularly bloodthirsty and ruthless, destroying property they can’t take with them and killing civilians without compunction. The other observation emerging from this passage is Felix’s description of Gabriek’s property as “our farm,” revealing that it was his hope and intention to live perpetually with Gabriek.

“‘That wasn’t the Nazis doing the bombing,’ she says. ‘It was the British and the Americans.’

‘The railway junction here is a Nazi transport hub,’ explains Yuli. ‘And there is a Nazi regional headquarters here too. The way the British and the Americans see it, with this many Nazis around, it’s easier just to take out the whole town.’”

Gleitzman, as he demonstrates the problematic nature of the Wartime Hazards for Civilians, shows how the various military forces place strategic advancement above their concern over collateral casualties. As the author explains, each force has a reason for harming civilian infrastructure. Readers may be surprised at the revelation that the British and American forces were not above bombing targets that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.

“Then I noticed something at the back of the room. Part of the wall is broken away, and behind it is another room, a little one with no windows. On the floor of the little room are three kid size mattresses.

I know what hiding places look like because I lived in one for two years and two months. And there’s mostly only one type of kid who has to live in a hiding place in Poland in 1945.

‘It’s alright,’ I say to the pile of wrecked furniture. ‘I’m Jewish too.’”

This discovery leads Felix into a series of encounters in which he, at age 13, gathers a disparate group of refugee children, leads them to a sanctuary of safety, settles disputes between them, and becomes their unquestioned leader. These events are emotionally powerful for Felix in that three of the children are Jewish sisters who remind him of his beloved friend Zelda who perished in an earlier book of the series. Two boys he will save, however, are Hitler Youth, whom he must talk himself into sparing. The exchanges between the children allow Gleitzman to reveal the effects of war on orphaned children and the extent to which even children must go simply to survive in wartime.

“‘Why aren’t you at your place?’ I say. ‘With your mom and dad?’

[…] ‘Bombed,’ he mumbles.

For a fleeting moment, in my imagination, I have a horrible vision. The whole of Europe full of kids on their own. Struggling to survive the world’s biggest parent shortage. Trying to find their own way.

I am so lucky I have Yuli.”

This is one of Felix’s imagined visions that turns out to be accurate. By some estimates, around 15 million children across Europe were orphaned as a result of World War II. The six children that Felix rescues were actually double-orphaned, as the woman hiding the orphaned Jewish sisters and the man sheltering the orphaned German children were both killed by Allied bombs. While Felix expresses gratitude that he has Yuli, he eventually comes to believe that he has been quadruple orphaned, thinking he has permanently lost his parents and both Gabriek and Yuli. In the absence of parents, Felix emerges as the temporary father figure for the other six orphans.

“The two Hitler youth boys don’t say anything or do anything, just stare at me. They don’t look like they care who I am or what I’m here for. But I can see they want me to rescue them too.

For a few moments I don’t want to rescue them. I think of Mum and Dad and Yuli and the others and I want to hurt them.

Then I remember I’m doing without parents now.

People who aren’t bothering about parents shouldn’t bother about revenge either.”

This event marks a pivotal, final step in Felix’s process of Maturing Through Adversity. Finding three Jewish sisters and three German orphans, two of them Hitler Youth, he puts aside the desire for revenge against Nazis that he has voiced throughout the novel and digs the German children out of a bombed-out home. Taking the six refugees to an island in a swamp, for the first time with no adult input, Felix stands alone as the leader and provider of the group and takes it upon himself to make the rules and instill hope in his young, unruly charges. Gleitzman’s comment linking parental instincts and the need for revenge implies that the need for vengeance is rooted in the need to reconcile the past and is not helpful in providing for the present.

“‘Our mum and dad were proud of Helmut in the Hitler Youth,’ says Bug. ‘He was keeping our family safe.’

‘Didn’t work, though, did it?’ said Helmut sadly. ‘Adolf Hitler should have stayed in Munich and been a travel agent, that’s what my mum said before she died.’

We all think about this, and how different all our lives would have been if he had.”

This passage demonstrates how wartime situations ravage not only the Jewish and Polish children, but also the German youths who were inevitably caught up in the conflict. For example, German youths were forced to take up arms against both Allied and Russian forces as the war drew to a close. Here also, the author uses the simple observation of a youth to reveal an obscene truth: The unimaginable horrors of the war, including every evil befalling these six children, were largely driven by the vainglorious ambitions of a single individual.

“I pat my chest under the Nazi jacket to make sure my medical package is safe inside my shirt. Doctor Zajak’s scalpels and needles and a candle, wrapped in my cotton vest.

If any of the others get bullets in them, I can do clean and hot, whether that’ll be enough to save them I don’t know.

This is another hard thing about being a parent. Wanting to give good protection and not knowing if you can.”

“Clean and hot” refer to commands that Zajak, the field doctor, used to tell Felix when the need arose to sanitize and cauterize the bullet wounds of soldiers. Gleitzman creates a scene that would be delightfully comic if it did not deal with a dangerous, potentially lethal partisan mission planned by Felix and his six orphans: the derailing of a Nazi supply chain. Their mission, as far-fetched as readers might find it, has become necessary since the children have run out of food.

“‘Survivors?’ I say. ‘How could there be survivors? It was a death camp. All the people who got taken there were killed.’

‘Most of them were killed,’ says Yuli. ‘Almost all of them. But it was also a work camp, and a few survived. We’ve been getting reports from Jewish partisan groups period since the Nazis started losing the war, they’ve been marching survivors from their Polish concentration camps back to Germany.’”

For more than two years, Felix has believed both his parents died in a Nazi concentration camp. The simple possibility that one or both of his parents might have survived and might be at a liberated camp in Germany fuels him with a renewed, unquenchable hope. He tempers his desire to rejoice, however, recognizing that the other children have no hope of recovering their parents.

“I’m looking for the camp where Mum and Dad are. All I can see are more wrecked houses and villages. And miserable people sitting on rubble, looking hopeless.

Just like Poland.

It feels strange.

This is Germany, the country that invented Nazis. The country that started the war. I want to hate it, but I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would.”

Riding with Russian soldiers to the concentration camp in Germany where his parents might still be alive, Felix realizes that the complete devastation of his country is matched by the destruction of German cities as well. Having watched the Russian soldiers commit atrocities against German civilians, he recognizes that civilians in every war-torn nation are equally victims.

“I kneel down and me and Mum put our arms around each other. Because she’s so thin she feels smaller than me, but only at first. Then she feels bigger than me and it’s the best feeling in the world.

We stay like that in the dusty twilight of the Nazi shed for a long time.

A long, long time.”

For Felix, this is the ultimate victory. Despite everything and everyone they had lost, four years of separation, and losing the possibility of a future, Felix and his mother had survived a war marked by the intention of a ruthless, efficient army to kill them. The single longing most expressed by Felix throughout, for the embrace of a parent, is answered in this passage when mother and child are reunited.

“The kind army doctor who speaks Polish has explained to me that crying is important when you work with people who die. If you cry each time, it helps you keep going.

Each time I go to the same place.

The corner of the big grave where Mum is buried.”

As a way of working through his grief over the death of his mother, Felix gets permission to work as a medical assistant to help other concentration camp survivors who are near death. Here, the author shows the depth of Felix’s character in his ability to remain with and comfort dying people. When Gabriek surprises him by showing up at the camp, Felix reacts with unrestrained joy. This is the author’s way of expressing that, despite all he has endured, Felix can express every emotion and achieve connection with other human beings.