Customers frequently ask if we have this series in the bookshop, and we always carry it. Until now though, I hadn't read it myself.

I have, of course, read many novels and much non-fiction about the Holocaust. What makes this one so striking is the beautifully written naivety of Felix who is both a storyteller and the teller of this story. He begins believing himself to be pretending to be an orphan, and he feels sorry for the other orphans because they don't have anything to hope for. This hope carries him as he runs away to find and help his parents, and as he falls in with other lost and hidden children.

Not only is he naive, but he is also a person who can find hope again, even when all hope seems to have been dashed. This characteristic is what makes Felix a survivor emotionally, and what gives the reader a way through the horror and misery of these terrible times.