Orphan Monster Spy

Product Information

A big thank you to Penguin Group and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this YA book about a young girl caught up in trying to prevent the creation of a bomb like the world has never seen. 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. |Stinging with drama, action and, above all, a relentless sense of urgency, this ruthlessly remarkable debut sees an indomitable Jewess go undercover.

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen: 9780451478757

Through Sarah’s fictional adventures I want to illuminate this time and make it real for the reader. I want them to understand that history, to interrogate it and then question the events of today. Nobody should ever say ‘this couldn’t happen now’ because it can and it does. As the philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Though no punches are pulled about the unimaginable atrocity of the death camps, a life-affirming history Sarah: There are some incredibly dark and dramatic scenes in the book, but the one that stands out in my mind is the River Run. Sarah is challenged to compete in an annual race by the dangerous queen bee of the Nazi boarding school, known as the Ice Queen. If she wins, she may be accepted by the Ice Queen and able to get closer to her target and the crucial information she has been put in the school to collect. If she loses, she’ll be leaving the school, probably injured and with the mission in ruins. And the Ice Queen doesn’t play fair. This scene is where we see just how far Sarah is prepared to go to succeed and to survive, a blow-by-blow account of pain, sweat, blood and determination set against a frozen landscape and populated by vicious characters, that had me on edge from start to finish. Matt expertly shows how Sarah uses the wits and skills she honed scrambling over city rooftops to steal food as a starving Jewish outcast, to now defeat her supposed superiors. It’s pure genius. 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). A powerful, bleak, and penetrating portrait of an isolated young woman excelling in unimaginable danger

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. In most cases when it’s YA, I can forgive a multitude of sins: Orphan Monster Spy is at once bloody silly and frustratingly entertaining. Let’s just say that bloody silly is the angle I’ll take. 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.” 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.”

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen - LoveReading4Kids

For the most part, the writing is strong. However, whilst it’s clear and relatively fast-paced, the internal dialogue is intrusive and repetitive - the constant reminders of Sarah’s Jewishness in particular. Sure, she must be hyperconscious of the fact, but I as a reader have already grasped that given the historical context. Killeen is clearly intelligent, and this makes the peppering of clunky German phrases and terrible action scenes harder to bear. 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. I didn't really know what I was going to get with Orphan Monster Spy , but goodness, what I got was probably better than anything I would've guessed. A half-Jewish girl in Nazi Germany passes up a chance to escape in favor of the opportunity to screw with Nazis. Sarah is to hide in plain sight at a boarding school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them. She must befriend the daughter of a key scientist to gain access to the blueprints for a bomb that could destroy the cities of Western Europe, and steal them.Like Inglourious Basterds for tweens, this clever YA title features Sarah, a blond, blue-eyed Jewish girl in 1939 Germany."-- The New York Post Orphan Monster Spy nos trae la historia de Sarah, una chica judía que trata de escaparse de la Alemania Nazi. En su intento de huida conoce al Capitán, un hombre británico que trabaja en cubierto para los Aliados en el seno del tercer reich: Berlín. A forma de pagar una deuda con la niña, el hombre le ofrece un trabajo como espía ¿La misión? ingresar a un colegio nacional socialista, donde se les enseña a los niños a odiar a los judíos y amar a la patria y al Fuhrer, en busca de una bomba que podría destruir a un país entero. 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. 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.

Matt Killeen | Penguin Random House Matt Killeen | Penguin Random House

The winners of The Farshore Reading for Pleasure Teacher Awards 2023, highlighting the work schools are doing to encourage a love of reading, have... YA 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. Right now, history is repeating. The very things for which the teenagers who confronted the Third Reich sacrificed so much are under threat. Resistance has never been so important. I hope that the readers of Orphan Monster Spy will part of that.Her name is Sarah. She’s blonde, blue-eyed, and Jewish in 1939 Germany. And her act of resistance is about to change the world. The world building and the insight to Nazi time is done very brilliantly, you can see the research done.. It has a lot of German words and I had to constantly search and find out their meaning (because well I didn't know any of them, totally new to me). But they provided a great insight into those times. That childhood also created a fierce, committed, if not always well-informed, feminist. My father might have been considered a good role model in a bygone age, but his raging patriarchal brand of masculinity left me with no illusions about men. Some strong and fearless sister-figures in early adolescence, plus a General Leia here and a Simone de Beauvoir there, set the tone for my creative life. I embraced the feminine, fell in love with Anne Shirley and the girls of Malory Towers, sought out my own role models and set out to write something worthy of them. 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. There were a few German words and phrases that I wished were translated in this book, but other than that I liked the book a lot. The Captain was appropriately enigmatic and businesslike and Sarah did what she had to do to keep both of them alive and to complete her mission. The last quarter of the book was very suspenseful. Despite the fact that the protagonist was only 15, I wouldn't characterize this book as young adult. Nothing was simplified or sentimentalized. I would read more books by this author.

Orphan, Monster, Spy | Usborne | Be Curious Orphan, Monster, Spy | Usborne | Be Curious

Lo menos que me ha gustado son los recurrentes sueños, aunque, en muchas ocasiones, eran recuerdos, lo cual te acercaba más a la protagonista.

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. The thing I love most about this book is probably how psychological it is. It's more than a bit horrifying to see the indoctrination of the girls in the boarding school and how the Nazi mindset pushes the girls to be so incredibly cruel to one another. Even more horrifying is seeing Sarah slip from time to time into that mindset; as a Jew, she's one of the people her schoolmates are vowing to destroy, yet there's more than one occasion where Sarah thinks about hurting or even killing someone just because they're weak or unsuccessful. She always catches herself, but these slip-ups are so well written and truly believable as Sarah pushes herself deeper and deeper into her persona of just another 'little monster.' Not quite implausible I suppose, the entire premise is flimsy at best. A German Jewish orphan is recruited by a British agent/spy (agent of what, exactly?) on a complete whim, admitted into a high-ranking Nazi boarding school with a story that doesn’t add up, and tasked with befriending the daughter of an eminent scientist to gain access to his lab notes. H’m. 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. I wish I’d written this myself. Deeply disturbing and chillingly good.”—Elizabeth Wein, New York Times bestselling author of Code Name Verity