So it had potential... the story is fairly interesting and I cared about the characters. However, you’d think a story about espionage in WW2 would be way more exciting and while there are some intense parts... I forgot it’s YA so it mostly focuses on things like school, arguing with adults, main character socializing with other young girls, etc. Also didn’t care for the some of the dialogue. I absolutely loved this book. It's fierce, spirited and exciting - and it combines two of my favourite things, early 20th century history and boarding school books. Sarah is a brilliant main character, and the situation the book puts her in (infiltrating a Nazi boarding school as a Jewish girl) is incredibly tense. There are some frightening and violent parts to this book, obviously, so it's one for older readers, but anyone 14+ who likes historical thrillers will really enjoy this.

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen | Goodreads Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen | Goodreads

At the same time, I found it satisfying how strong Sarah was in their company. In an ignorant bubble, where they were being taught that an Arian race was supreme and strong, there was Sarah, out thinking, outrunning and outmanoeuvring them at every turn. Sarah, a Jew, someone seen as week and a plague on society. A stunning, smart, grounded tale of intrigue in Nazi Germany, so guilty and detailed it feels like true memory rather than fiction. Sarah is an angry, appealing, heart-wrenching hero, superhuman and achingly frail in equal measure.” Author Guy Bass introduces SCRAP, about one robot who tried to protect the humans on his planet against an army of robots. Now the humans need his... LoveReading4Kids exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading4Kids means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. The whole novel felt electric, and had a very presence that I haven't had from a book in this genre for a good while ( The Color of Secrets and Susanna Kearsley are two that come to mind).Moving to South London, I regularly passed a mural dedicated to Violette Szabo – an SOE agent who had parachuted twice into occupied France to help organise resistance and sabotage. I knew her story well, as I’d seen the movie Carve Her Name With Pride as a child, but I was amazed how young she was when she volunteered, just 21, for what was barely more than a suicide mission. At 21 I’d been a mess, not much more mature than I had been at 18 or 15…and Sarah, my lead character, was born, pretty much fully‐formed. The outsider, the girl who fits everywhere and nowhere. My small, young looking heroine needed a mission, somewhere she could hide in plain sight, so the school, Elsa and her father fell into place shortly after, fed in part by my love of the Malory Towers books. A little research revealed that not only did the Napola schools exist, but there were several for girls and very little written about them. Would the Allies use a teenage agent if they needed to? They did much worse before the end of the war. It turns out there were plenty of teenage partisans, couriers and resisters fighting the Nazis, some as young as 12.

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen: 9780451478757

Kendra: I love that scene as well. Matt does such a terrific job of balancing the profound intensity and terror of Sarah’s experience with moments of lightness, and one of my favourite moments in the book is when she’s visiting a wealthy school friend’s home and gets to taste peanut butter for the first time. Later, when everything falls apart and is literally on fire all around her, Sarah grabs the peanut butter to take with her. It reminded me of the classic moment in the film The Godfather when Clemenza says, ‘Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.’ It’s a beautiful humanizing detail in dehumanizing circumstances. Killeen crams in plenty of great story ideas into this terrific novel that will appeal to young & old readers alike. In his notes at the end of the novel it's quite amazing to see how many real people & situations inspired this story. He also notes that when he was feeling down while writing someone told him that he "could be the YA Graham Greene" & after reading this book I think they may be right! Whatever else I read in the next twelve months Orphan Monster Spy is going to a hard one to beat as my favourite book of the year. I was very interested in the history notes at the end though. That was interesting, well written and the best part of this whole thing. Maybe this author should write nonfiction. I grew up in a decade obsessed with the Second World War. It seemed to dominate the books, comics, TV, playground games…everything. However, my mother’s best friend was German and after many sparkly, golden summers with her wonderful, warm and rabidly pacifist family, I found myself unable to swallow the idea that Germans were the war-mad, evil monsters depicted. Yet the more I learned of the Holocaust, the less sense any of this made, as I increasingly identified with its victims. I was an endlessly bullied child, in an era when bullying was considered the fault of the victim by the adults who were supposedly there to protect me. Thus began a lifelong appalled and horrified fascination with the Third Reich, its crimes and the war fought to defeat it.Would the future Germany have any evidence of its crimes? Would it smell bad and would people even know why?"

Orphan Monster Spy - Matt Killeen - Google Books Orphan Monster Spy - Matt Killeen - Google Books

The first book we read as part of this book club was Orphan, Monster, Spy by Matt Killeen. I was instantly attracted to this story because it is set during the war; I’m fascinated by stories set in war time and always have been. What’s more, this particular story is set in Germany during the Second World War, so it comes from another perspective. A few short years ago, the Nazi Party was some angry men in one beer hall. Germany had no army, wasn't allowed an army. Don't underestimate them. That's been everyone's mistake.” Like Inglourious Basterds for tweens, this clever YA title features Sarah, a blond, blue-eyed Jewish girl in 1939 Germany.”– The New York Post El libro en sí, me gustó ¿Tuve problemas para terminarlo? Sí; pero no porque me hubiese parecido malo, sino que por momentos se extendía a cosas que no eran relevantes a la trama y eran de puro relleno, por ende, aburrían. Yo creo que lo más destacable de esta historia, es sin lugar a duda la protagonista. Sarah es una chica de quince años que creció demasiado rápido, una chica afectada por la guerra, pero nunca tanto como para arruinar su espíritu. Es una chica que tiene miedo, pero nunca deja que la paralice; es una chica que sabe lo que quiere, pero nunca se olvida de mostrar compasión, y sobre todo, es una chica a la que la vida le pegó mil patadas, pero nunca se rindió. Me parece que Sarah podría ser un gran rol para niñas que están en plena etapa madurativa, por eso, creo yo, que ese es el público ideal para este libro.By the time I finished the final edits, narrow-minded and spiteful nationalism had been normalised, allowing racism and sexism to flourish online, on our streets, in our media and in our politics. We are, right now, looking at the conditions that created the Third Reich and all it will take, to paraphrase Burke, is for good people to do nothing. I'm giving this a full 5 stars because I loved the book so much that I don't even remember nor care about what I took a 0.5 off. I still keep thinking about it and I want to read it again, and so you see, I'm still in a book hangover a full month later. That's how powerful this is. |Stinging with drama, action and, above all, a relentless sense of urgency, this ruthlessly remarkable debut sees an indomitable Jewess go undercover. Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments

Orphan Monster Spy Series by Matt Killeen - Goodreads

Set in a brilliant, terrifyingly-imagined third reich Germany, Orphan Monster Spy's Sarah sits alongside Lyra and True Grit's Mattie Ross as one of the best spiky, clever, daring, unyielding protagonists I've read.” Martin Stewart, author of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize-longlisted RiverkeepYA books didn’t really exist as a ‘thing’ in my day. There were a couple of High School romance series and of course, Judy Blume, but then there was a big gap and you just seemed to leap into adult books as though teenage, coming of age characters, didn’t matter. La historia es bonita, a pesar de lo cruel de las situaciones a las que se enfrenta Sarah siendo tan pequeña. A su vez es sorprendente lo bien que relata la soledad y autonomía a la que se enfrenta el personaje, ya que a pesar de tener al Capitán, el mismo no cubre la figura paterna o de un familiar que le hace falta a Sarah, sino lo he visto casi más como un amigo-adulto. Se observa en la novela la crueldad de la Alemania nazi en su día a día, con una cuidadosa precisión en los detalles, ya que contamos con varios personajes muy observadores. I recently joined a book club. I’ve always wanted to be part of one, but had never managed to get myself an ‘invite’. I knew of ones that existed, but it always seemed like an elusive secret that you had to be especially asked to be a part of. And I never was. So that was that. Most WWII novels that I read are either focused on the Allies and their efforts, be that spying or fighting or general history, or on the Holocaust and those in prison camps. I find both fiction and non-fiction books on these two topics really interesting, and up to this point, I was happy sort of staying in that lane. I didn't know I was hoping for a book like Orphan Monster Spy until I read it--one that focuses on the war from a completely unique viewpoint, one that doesn't shy away from the brutality and the horrors of the Nazi party just because it's a YA book, one that really makes me hope for a sequel despite the fact that it's going to take me a while to recover from this first one.