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Author: Sarah Cohen-Scali
Genre: Historical Fiction, YA
Publisher: Roaring Book Press
Date: March 7, 2017
Length: 432 pages
This book was free from NetGalley in Exchange for an honest review
Nazi Germany. 1936.
In the Lebensborn program, carefully selected German women are recruited by the Nazis to give birth to new members of the Aryan race. Inside one of these women is Max, literally counting the minutes until he is born and he can fulfill his destiny as the perfect Aryan specimen.
Max is taken away from his birth mother soon after he enters the world. Raised under the ideology and direction of the Nazi Party, he grows up without any family, without any affection or tenderness, and he soon becomes the mascot of the program. That is until he meets Lukas, a young Jewish boy whom he knows he is meant to despise. Instead, the friendship that blossoms changes Max’s world forever.
Translated from the original French, Sarah Cohen-Scali brings the details of the Lebensborn program to light in this haunting and heartbreaking novel.
Description from
I had initially been very excited about this book. I've read a bit about the Lebensborn program and I thought this would be a great, but painful, read. WW2 books are very popular with older elementary and middle school students. I was hoping that Max would be a more challenging and thought provoking book for my YA readers. Unfortunately I really struggled with this book. I forced myself to finish it because I felt obligated to at least write a review for NetGalley. I'm glad I finished, but it was hard. Even though this was a tough book for me, I think this could be a very successful group reading book.
