Posted on by TracyC

When Jessie Came Across the Sea

When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest, illustrated by P. J. Lynch, 1997.

Jessie and her grandmother live in a small, thatched cottage in a small village. The little village is poor, and so are Jessie and her grandmother. Jessie’s parents died when she was a baby. Jessie’s grandmother raised her, and she insists that Jessie have lessons with the village rabbi, like the boys in the village. Jessie can read and write, and she also tries to teach her grandmother. Her grandmother makes a little money by sewing lace, and she teaches Jessie how to sew. Although they don’t have much, they are basically content with their lives.

Then, one evening, the rabbi makes an important announcement. His brother, who was living in America, has died. Before his death, he sent a ticket for a ship traveling to America to the rabbi, asking him to join him in America. Now that his brother is dead, there is no need for the rabbi to go to America, and he would rather stay in the village with his congregation. However, he thinks that someone else should use the ticket his brother sent.

Various villagers ask rabbi if they can use the ticket, offering reasons why each of them would be the best person to go. They brag up their best qualities, boasting about how strong, smart, and brave they are. The rabbi knows that they’re boasting, so he just tells them that he will pray about it and let them know his decision tomorrow.

The next day, he goes to see Jessie and her grandmother and tells them that Jessie should be the one to go to America. His reasoning is that his brother’s widow owns a dress shop in New York City. Jessie can work there, and she would be a comfort to a lonely widow. Jessie doesn’t really want to leave her grandmother, and her grandmother fears to send her, but her grandmother can see the rabbi’s logic. She knows that this is an important opportunity for Jessie.

So, Jessie leaves her village and sets sail on a crowded ship for America. On the ship, Jessie is scared, lonely, and seasick. As Jessie spends time with the other passengers, she makes a few friends, and she sews a few small items for them. A boy named Lou, who is a shoemaker’s son, makes a pair of small shoes for a baby, and he and Jessie also become friends.

Finally, their ship arrives at New York. Everyone crowds around the rails of the ship to see the Statue of Liberty and their first glimpse of America. The ship docks at Ellis Island, and the passengers disembark to be inspected and questioned by immigration officials.

The rabbi’s brother’s widow comes to meet Jessie. She is a friendly woman, and she asks Jessie to call her Cousin Kay. Cousin Kay shows Jessie around the city. It’s a crowded, confusing place with fascinating sights, although the streets aren’t paved with gold, as Jessie has heard. Cousin Kay runs the dress shop out of her home, and she pays Jessie to sew for her. Jessie likes watching the busy street outside while she sews, and she saves the money she earns in a jar.

When Jessie puts some lace on a plain white dress, turning it into a lovely bridal gown, the shop becomes popular with young women who are getting married and looking for similar gowns.

Cousin Kay also insists that Jessie go to school and learn English. It isn’t easy, but Jessie learns. She likes walking around the city and going to the local library. Gradually, Jessie begins feeling more at home in New York, and she builds a new life for herself there. One day, she runs into Lou again in the park, and they begin meeting there regularly. Lou proposes to Jessie, and Jessie uses the money she has saved to buy a ticket so her grandmother can come to America for their wedding.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was young! I was really older than the target audience when it was first published, but I enjoyed the story. It’s one of those books that I think takes on more significance when you’re older and understand more of the history behind the story. We don’t know exactly where Jessie is from because the book never says, but her journey resembles the kind of journey that many people made during this same period of history. We don’t know the year, either, but it appears to be set in the late 19th century or early 20th century.

Although coming to a strange country, alone and unable to speak the language, is a scary experience, Jessie is fortunate because there is a friendly and caring person waiting there for her, and she has a job lined up that suits her skills. In real life, not everyone was so fortunate, and it was more of a struggle for them to get established in their new home. Jessie still has to struggle with homesickness and missing her grandmother, but her life changes for the better because she took the chance to go to a new country and start a new life. Readers can emphasize with Jessie’s fears and uncertainty as she starts out on her journey and celebrate with her when things work out for the best.

The pictures in the book are beautiful! Readers really get the sense that they’re seeing another time, with Jessie’s tiny village, the crowded ship in the rain, and busy New York City, more than 100 years ago. Even when the environment and circumstances are harsh, the pictures are charming.

There is a note in the beginning of the book for parents and teachers about how they can use this book to spark discussion with children. They can use the opportunity to invite children to learn how their own families arrived in America, because this book was originally intended for an audience of young American readers, and most people who live in the United States (with the exception of Native Americans) are descended from people who came from somewhere else. It’s an opportunity for children to learn their family’s history and to see how it compares with that of other people, whose families also made a decision to come here and start over, going through their own struggles along the way. There is also some general advice about sharing books with children, and making a point of surrounding children with books and reading aloud to them.

Posted on by TracyC

Hanukkah at Valley Forge

Hanukkah at Valley Forge by Stephen Krensky, illustrated by Greg Harlin, 2006.

It’s a cruel winter at Valley Forge, during the American Revolution, and George Washington is worried about the welfare and morale of his soldiers.

As Washington walks through the camp, he sees a young soldier lighting a candle and reciting something softly to himself.

Curious about what he’s doing, Washington stops to talk to him, casually remarking on how cold the night is. The young soldier says that he saw colder nights when he was young in Poland, and he is lighting candles for Hanukkah. Washington asks him what that means, and the soldier explains the meaning of the holiday.

The soldier recounts the story of how Israel was conquered by the Ancient Greeks, who forced Jewish people to worship Greek gods and tried to replace Jewish customs with Greek ones. Washington also says that he understands what it’s like to feel like you’re under the thumb of a king who lives far away and the desire for liberty. The Jewish soldier says his family left Poland for similar reasons, because they were not being allowed to practice their beliefs there.

Returning to the story of the ancient Israelites, the soldier explains that a priest named Mattathias refused the Greeks’ orders to bow to idols, and he fought back against the Greeks. Mattathias and his five sons, who were called the Maccabees, led a rebellion against the Greeks. They were a small group, and the odds were against them, but they were determined to continue the fight against their oppressors. Washington says that he understands the feeling because his army is in a similar position.

Continuing the story, the soldier recounts how Mattathias’s son, Judah, inspired their troops by reminding them that God was on their side, leading them to victory. When they finally managed to overthrow their Greek rulers, they took back their Temple and lit the Temple menorah. The menorah was supposed to be kept lit constantly, and they were worried because there was very little oil left. They only had enough to keep it burning for one day, and they weren’t sure when they could get more oil. However, they lit the menorah anyway, trusting that God would somehow provide them with more soon. It took them eight days to find more oil for the menorah, but to their surprise, the menorah continued to stay lit all the time they were searching, lasting eight times longer than they thought it would with the amount of oil they had. Hanukkah became the commemoration of this miracle.

George Washington contemplates the story that the soldier told him, and he finds it inspiring. It reminds him that, even though their current situation in Valley Forge may seem bleak, there have been others before them who have also faced steep odds in their struggles and who still managed to succeed. He begins to think that, if they persevere, they may also be gifted with a miracle of their own.

There is an author’s note at the end of the book that explains the inspiration behind the story. As the characters in the story do, the author draws parallels between the American Revolutionary War and the historical battle that began the tradition of Hanukkah. The author learned that George Washington may have learn about Hanukkah during the Revolutionary War, although there are no entries in his diary to confirm it, so he used excerpts from George Washington’s other writings to explain his sentiments. The author also offers commentary on bullies and the importance of standing up to oppressors, both in the context of war and in daily life.

This book won the Sydney Taylor award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

My Reaction

I love books that include little-known or lesser-known events. Whether this one happened or happened in the way the author tells it is difficult to verify, and it seems likely that it’s more of a folk tale than an historical account. George Washington was a real, historical person, but so many legends have grown up around his life that it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether certain stories about him actually happened. As the author says, Washington’s own diary doesn’t offer any verification about this particular incident. Other reviewers of this book, including J. L. Bell, who specializes in Revolutionary War history in the Boston area, have attempted to trace the origins of this particular story about Washington learning about Hanukkah during the Revolutionary War. In his blog, J. L. Bell explains the known sources for this story, which vary in their description of exactly when the encounter between Washington and the Jewish soldier took place and what the soldier’s name was. The soldiers who have been credited with having this encounter with George Washington were real people, but there’s nothing that definitively proves that the discussion about Hanukkah actually happened with any of them. The story is probably more folklore than history, and Bell believes that it started to circulate during the 20th century, when there were more immigrants arriving from Poland with stories and experiences like the one the Polish soldier in the story tells about not being allowed to practice their religion openly. Even so, the parallels the story draws between the ancient rebellion of the Maccabees and the American Revolution are fascinating.

There are certain feelings that are universal among humans, and the author’s point that nobody likes being oppressed by a bully, whether that bully is another person or a government or an army, is true. No matter what you’re up against in life, perseverance in the face of hardship is important, and miracles can come to those who continue to stand up for themselves and what they believe in. It is also true that people who come from different sets of circumstances can help to inspire each other by sharing common feelings about their struggles.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Make a Wish, Molly

Make a Wish, Molly by Barbara Cohen, 1994.

This book is the sequel to Molly’s Pilgrim.

Things have improved for Molly in Winter Hill since she and Emma became friends.  Now, Molly doesn’t feel quite so alone as she once did.  However, Emma is still friends with the nasty Elizabeth (resident mean girl from the first book).  Molly has learned that a major part of Elizabeth’s resentment toward her is that Elizabeth is used to being the teacher’s pet and the center of attention at school.  In both first and second grade, she always seemed to be the favorite student.  Now, in the third grade, Elizabeth thinks that their teacher prefers Molly, and she can’t stand it.  So, she tries to make trouble for Molly whenever she can and make others not like her, too.

Emma tries to ignore Elizabeth’s nastiness and invites both girls to her birthday party.  Molly is excited because she’s never been to a birthday party in America before, and birthdays are celebrated very differently in America from the way they were in Russia.  Emma and Elizabeth (in her condescending way) explain how birthday parties are, that the birthday girl receives presents from her friends and gives them small party favors in return, and that there is cake and ice cream for everyone.  Molly has never had a cake like the ones that the girls look at in the bakery window and is eager to try it.  But, there’s a problem.

Molly’s mother says that it’s fine for her to go to the party and is willing to make some doll clothes for Emma’s birthday present, but she says that Molly cannot try the cake because the party will take place during Passover, and Jewish families like theirs cannot eat leavened foods during that time. Leavened foods are those that include rising agents, like yeast, baking powder, and baking soda, which includes cakes and breads. For Passover, Molly and her family are limited to things which don’t have these ingredients.

Instead, Molly’s mother packs a snack for Molly to take and eat while the others have the cake.  At first, Molly thinks maybe she could disobey her mother just this once and try the cake anyway without her noticing and without feeling different among the other girls, but when a piece of cake is placed in front of her at the party, she can’t bring herself to eat it.

Of course, Elizabeth takes advantage of Molly’s inability to eat the cake to make her feel bad and look bad in front of the others.  Elizabeth says that Jewish people don’t like to eat in Christian homes.  Molly tries to explain that isn’t the problem and to tell them about Passover, but Elizabeth ignores her explanation and just says that Molly’s reluctance to eat proves that what her mother told her about Jews was true.  (Let me just say that when a kid is as awful as Elizabeth is routinely, I always assume that the parents are exactly the same way.  I decided that Elizabeth’s mother was probably a bully and a snob back in the first book, so hearing that she’s been spewing anti-Semitic comments is no more than what I would have expected.  I view this type of behavior as an off-shoot of a bullying mindset, so I would completely expect that a person who is prone to one type of bullying would also engage in another. The apples never fall far from the tree.)  Molly knows that she can’t make the other kids understand the situation, so she just leaves in embarrassment.

When she gets home, Molly tells her mother about what happened.  Her mother says that everyone is a little different from other people, and there’s no use in pretending that they don’t live different types of lives from some of their neighbors.  However, Molly also has a birthday coming soon, and Molly’s mother thinks that if they invite some of the girls from Emma’s party to their house for a celebration, they will see that Molly’s family isn’t quite as different as they might think.

At first, Molly isn’t sure that it will be such a good idea, but it turns out better than she expects.  Her birthday is full of wonderful surprises.  There’s no cake, but Molly’s mother bakes other wonderful goodies, like rugelach (pastries with apples, raisins, and nuts).  Emma and another girl, Fay, try them and like them, but Elizabeth still refuses.  She also just looks defiant when Molly’s mother proves to her that Jews will wash and reuse plates that Christians have eaten from, not throw them away, like Elizabeth’s mother said before.  Once again, the issue with Elizabeth isn’t how correct or incorrect she (or her mother) was in whatever she said but whether or not she happens to look better than someone else at the current moment.  All Molly’s mother’s demonstration means to her is that she just lost another opportunity to look better than someone, and that annoys her.  But, Molly doesn’t care so much about Elizabeth’s lingering nastiness at that point because she knows that Emma is still her friend and Fay has just become a new friend.

There is also a movie version of this book, although the story was altered slightly so that the girl who insults Molly at the party says that it was her aunt who told her all the bad stuff about Jews, not her mother.  Also, the movie takes place in a time contemporary with when it was made.  The original book takes place in the past, judging by why the reasons why Molly’s family had to leave Russia and the clothes that the girls wear in the pictures.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Molly’s Pilgrim

MollysPilgrim

Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen, 1983.

Molly has been unhappy since her family moved to the smaller town of Winter Hill, New Jersey so that her father could get a better job. In New York City, there were other Jewish girls like her, and she didn’t feel so strange and out-of-place. The Winter Hollow girls don’t understand her at all and don’t like her. Molly’s family fled Russia to escape persecution, and they’ve only been living in America for about a year.  Molly still has a Yiddish accent and doesn’t quite speak proper English yet.  Molly is constantly teased about the way she talks and her unfamiliarity with American habits.

MollysPilgrimSchool

One girl in particular, Elizabeth, makes up rhymes to make fun of Molly, even following her home from school like a creepy stalker, to continue singing them at her. The other girls follow Elizabeth’s lead because they kind of admire her and because she is always giving them candy.

MollysPilgrimBullies

Then, one day, the girls’ teacher begins teaching them about Thanksgiving. Of course, Elizabeth makes a big deal about the fact that Molly has never heard about Thanksgiving before. But, Molly finds the story about the pilgrims interesting. The teacher says that for their Thanksgiving activity, instead of making paper turkeys like they usually do, the children are going to make clothespin dolls to look like American Indians and pilgrims, so they can create a scene like the first Thanksgiving.

MollysPilgrimClass

When Molly gets home and explains the assignment to her mother, she has to tell her mother what a “pilgrim” is. She explains it by saying that they were people who came from across the ocean in search of religious freedom. Her mother understands that and offers to help Molly with the doll.

However, when Molly sees what her mother has done with the doll, she is worried. The doll is beautiful, but her mother has dressed the doll in the clothes of a Russian refugee, like Molly’s family, not in the traditional Puritan garb of the pilgrims. At first, Molly is sure that she’ll be teased more than ever at school when she shows up with a doll wearing the wrong clothes and that people will think that she’s stupid for not understanding how pilgrims dressed.

MollysPilgrimDoll

But, Molly’s mother is correct in pointing out that their family are modern pilgrims, coming to America for the same reasons that the original pilgrims did. Molly does get some teasing from Elizabeth (that’s not a surprise, since it’s Elizabeth, after all), but when the teacher asks Molly about the meaning of her doll, it leads everyone to a better understanding, both of the holiday and where Molly and her family fit in with their new country and its history.

Molly’s teacher points out that the holiday of Thanksgiving wasn’t entirely an original idea that the pilgrims invented all by themselves but that they took their inspiration from a much older Jewish tradition from the Old Testament.  Human beings do not exist in a vacuum, and we all regularly take ideas that we’re exposed to and build on them in our own lives.  Although Puritans were generally known for their belief in religious “purity” (hence, their name) and noted for their intolerance to different religions and beliefs, they also strongly believed in education, which frequently involves taking past ideas and knowledge and applying them toward new situations.  Their Thanksgiving celebration was just an example of that, an older idea that they used for their own purpose, adapted to the lives of the people who adopted the tradition.  It was their celebration, but not their sole intellectual property.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

There is also a sequel to this book called Make a Wish, Molly, in which Molly learns about birthday parties in the United States.

My Reaction and Additional Information

The book doesn’t mention it, but the word “pilgrim” itself is also much older than the early Puritan colonists in America.  Before the development of the America colonies, it referred to any religious traveler on their way to a holy place, and many people still use it in that sense.  A person on a pilgrimage could be just about anyone from anywhere going to anywhere else as long as the journey has spiritual significance.  The Puritan colonists used that term for themselves to emphasize the reasons why they were seeking new homes in a new land.  For them, it was a kind of pilgrimage to a place where they could start again.  Molly’s family came to America in search of religious freedom, just as the Puritans did.  Their journeys weren’t quite the same, but they shared a common purpose and ended up in the same place (more or less).

By showing the links between Molly and her family and the pilgrims, Molly’s mother and her teacher help the other students to understand that Molly really does fit in, that her being there makes sense, and that she has a place in their class and in their celebration of Thanksgiving.

This story was also made into a short film. I remember seeing it in school when I was a kid in the early 1990s.  I checked on YouTube, and there are trailers posted for this film.  One thing that I hadn’t remembered from when I was a kid was that the time period of the book was earlier than the film.  In the film, the characters are shown to be contemporary with the time the film was made, but the style of dress of the girls in the book’s pictures and the things that Molly’s mother says about why the family left Russia indicate that the book probably takes place during the late 19th century or early 20th century, possibly around the same time as the events in the famous play/movie Fiddler on the Roof.

As a side note, if you’re wondering why the girl is named Molly, which doesn’t sound particularly Russian, Molly is typically a nickname for Mary and other, similar-sounding, related names.  Molly’s mother also calls her Malkeleh, which may be her original name or perhaps another variant, if her original name was Malka, as another reviewer suggests.

In spite of the warning on that last site I linked to about reading a book with your child that may be covered in class, I say to go ahead and read it anyway.  It’s hard to say what books may or may not be used in classes by individual teachers, and if your child’s teacher doesn’t happen to use this one, it’s still a good story.  Perhaps just warn your child not to say something that would spoil the ending for their classmates who haven’t read it yet.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Journey to America

journeytoamericaJourney to America by Sonia Levitin, 1970.

This is the first book in the Journey to America Saga.  Like her heroine, Lisa, Sonia Levitin also fled Germany with her family during World War II, and her stories are semi-autobiographical.

Twelve-year-old Lisa Platt lives with her family in Berlin in 1938.  But, with the rise of the Nazis, events have taken a frightening turn for Jewish families like theirs.  There has already been violence toward Jewish people, and travel is restricted.  Lisa’s father fears for their family, and their mother believes that war is about to break out.  Reluctantly, her parents have decided that the only thing to do is to leave Germany and try to start over somewhere else.

Because of the travel restrictions, Lisa’s father has to leave secretly, pretending that he is only going on vacation.  In reality, he and Lisa’s uncle will go to America and try to get established before sending for the rest of the family.  But, it isn’t safe for Lisa, her mother, and her two sisters to stay in Germany, waiting for word from them.  Instead, they pretend that they are joining Lisa’s father for a holiday in Switzerland.  They can only take a little luggage with them, as if they were really just going on vacation, and very little money.

journeytoamericapicBut, getting on the train out of Germany is only the first step of their long journey.  Lisa and her mother and sisters live as refugees in Switzerland, waiting for her father to help arrange for their passage to America.  Often, they have too little to eat because they don’t have much money.  There are some people who help them, and they make some new friends, but the long wait is difficult.  Meanwhile, they must face the frightening events taking shape around them, around the people they left behind, and their own uncertain future.

There is something in the stories that I’d like to describe a little more because I didn’t quite understand it when I first read this book as a kid, but I can explain it better now.  At one point in the story, Lisa’s grandmother suggests that her mother send the girls to England because other families are doing it and it would ensure that the children get safely out of the country.  Later, in Switzerland, Lisa gets a letter from her friend Rosemarie that says she and her sister are now in England without their parents because their father didn’t didn’t feel like he could leave Germany.  What they’re describing is the Kindertransport, a rescue effort started by Jewish, Quaker, and British government leaders to transport unaccompanied Jewish minors, from babies to age 17, from Germany and German-controlled countries to England for safety after the events of Kristallnacht made it clear that Jews were in serious danger in Germany.  When the children reached England, they were placed in foster homes, schools, and anywhere else willing to take them, similar to the way children evacuated from London to avoid the bombings later would be placed in foster homes or on farms.  Grandmother Platt points out that this could have been an option for her grandchildren when she discusses the possibilities with their mother, but since, neither the mother or father of the family wanted to stay in Germany, the family decided that they should all leave together.  The Kindertransport program ended when war actually broke out, but by then, about 10,000 children had been brought to England.  Although parents who sent their children to England on the Kindertransport hoped to reunite with them in England, most of the Kindertransport children who went to England never saw their parents again because their family members who stayed behind in Germany were killed in the Holocaust.  I had lessons about the Holocaust in school in Arizona, but they never mentioned the Kindertransport because it wasn’t something that really affected the area where we lived.  I did see a Holocaust survivor who came to speak at my high school in the early 2000s.  There were Holocaust survivors living in my area of Arizona then, and there still are as of this writing because I heard that they were among the first to be vaccinated during the coronavirus pandemic in early 2021.  This video from the BBC Newsnight and this video from the University and College Union explain more about it and have interviews with people who were brought to England on the Kindertransport as children.  Rosemarie and her sister would probably be very much like the people in those interviews years later.

Although there are sad parts of the book, there are lighter moments, too, and the characters are realistic and engaging.  There is only one illustration in my copy of the book, a drawing of Lisa and her sisters getting their pictures taken for their passports.  Other editions of the book have different illustrations.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, in different editions).

Posted on by TracyC

The Night Crossing

NightCrossingThe Night Crossing by Karen Ackerman, 1994.

It’s 1938 in Austria, and Clara’s parents have decided that their family needs to leave before things get worse.  Already, Jewish families like theirs are being rounded up by the Nazis, and Clara and her sister Marta were chased through the streets by other children, shouting insults.

Their family has been through things like this before.  Clara’s grandmother tells her about when she had to flee Russia as a little girl to escape the pogroms.  She brought her dolls Gittel and Lotte with her as her family hiked through the Carpathian Mountains.  Now, Clara will carry them with her as their family leaves Austria for Switzerland.

It’s a hard journey with lots of walking and little food.  The family can carry very little with them, and some of what they have they are forced to trade for food, a place to rest, and for not being turned over to the Nazis.  Finally, at the border crossing, Clara’s parents are afraid that they will have to get rid of the candlesticks that have been in their family for generations because they might be discovered by the border guards.  Then, Clara comes up with a plan to hide them in her dolls.  Will it work?

NightCrossingPicThis is a pretty short chapter book.  Although the subject matter is serious, and parts might be frightening to young children (the part where Clara and Marta are chased and perhaps some of the parts where the family is hiding), there are only vague references to more dark subjects like concentration camps (people who already know what they are and what happened there would understand, but children who haven’t heard about them wouldn’t get the full picture from the brief mentions).  The book would be a good, short introduction to the topic of the Holocaust by putting it in terms of the way it changed the lives of ordinary people who had to flee from it.  Actually, it wouldn’t be a bad way to start a discussion of the Syrian refugees in Europe by putting it into the context of ordinary people fleeing the violence of war.

This book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Twenty and Ten

TwentyTenTwenty and Ten by Claire Bishop, 1952.

The story takes place in occupied France during World War II.  Children were often sent to the countryside to escape the violence of war, and a group of twenty children, both boys and girls, are staying at a small school taught by a nun, Sister Gabriel.  Most of them are about eleven years old, although four-year-old Louis is allowed stay at the school with his older sister, Denise.

Janet, another student at the school, tells how a strange man comes to the school and begs them to help him hide ten Jewish orphans from the Nazis.  Sharing their school with these newcomers means that they will have to share their already meager rations with them and to keep their presence at the school absolutely secret.  In spite of the danger and difficulty, everyone at the school agrees to help.  They think of it as being like when Mary and Joseph had to take baby Jesus to Egypt to hide him from King Herod, a story they had recently acted out in play form.

TwentyTenPic1The two groups of children soon make friends, and one of the Jewish children, Arthur, shares something special with his new friend, Henry: a small piece of chocolate.  With the rationing, none of them have seen chocolate in a long time.  Henry decides to share a little with Janet because he likes her, and they decide to hide the rest and save it for later.  When Denise spies them with the chocolate and wants to have a little herself, she steals the piece of chocolate from where Henry has hidden it. The others chase after her to get the chocolate back, and they end up accidentally discovering a cave that none of them knew was there.

This becomes a vital discovery when the children spot a pair of Nazis heading toward their school.  Sister Gabriel is away, so the children have to take care of the situation themselves.  Quickly, Arthur leads the other Jewish children to the cave, where they can hide.  The other children remain at the school and try to keep the Nazis from learning anything.  They try not to even talk to the Nazis when they start asking questions.  But, how long can they keep it up?  Something has obviously happened to Sister Gabriel, and the Jewish children can’t hide in the cave forever.

There is a movie version of this book called Miracle at Moreaux.  The movie differs significantly from the book.  In the book, the children at the school are all welcoming to the Jewish children, but in the movie, some of the children at the school are afraid of the Jewish children (there are only three of them in the movie), one of them in particular hating Jewish people because she believes anti-Semitic stories she’s heard.  Also, instead of the cave that appears in the book, the movie uses a Christmas pageant as the device for confusing the Nazis and allowing the Jewish children to escape to Spain (instead of staying at the school until the end of the war, as they did in the book).

This book is available online through Internet Archive.