99 pages 3 hours read

Phillip M. Hoose

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

Nonfiction | Biography | YA | Published in 2015

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Introduction

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

  • Genre: Nonfiction; young adult biography
  • Originally Published: 2015
  • Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 970L; grades 8-12
  • Structure/Length: 18 chapters plus introduction and epilogue; approx. 208 pages; approx. 4 hours, 51 minutes on audio
  • Central Concern: This nonfiction biography narrates the experiences of 14-year-old Knud Pedersen, a Danish boy who, with his brother and friends, organizes resistance groups against the German occupation of their country in WWII.
  • Potential Sensitivity Issues: Wartime violence; imprisonment and abuse; psychological trauma

Phillip Hoose, Author

  • Bio: Born in 1947; raised in Indiana; attended Indiana University and the Yale School of Forestry; lives currently in Maine; writer of books for children and young adults; essayist, musician, songwriter, conservationist; earned the Maine Library Association’s Katahdin Award for lifetime achievement
  • Other Works: We Were There, Too!: Young People in US History (2001); The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (2004); Perfect, Once Removed: When Baseball Was All the World to Me (2006); Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (2009)
  • Awards: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal (honor; 2016); Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor (2016)

 

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

  • Justified Disobedience in Wartime
  • War and the Loss of Innocence
  • The Psychological Power of Resistance
  • The Trauma of World War II