This is the story of 12-year old Patty Bergen, a Jewish girl living in the South during WWII, who suffers from her father's physical and mental abuse and her mother's disinterest. When a German POW talks kindly to her while shopping (with prison guards nearby) in her father's clothing store, she is so starved for love that she later assists him when he escapes from a prisoner-of-war camp. Strong characters and a poignant story.

but the vile language makes the story tainted. I don't think it should be read by children because the abuse situations and the language. The reason I say this is that it is on every recommended book list for WWII for children! Anyway, the story is a good one but intense. A girl who is not wanted by anyone but the nanny, loved only by her grandparents discovers an escaped German pow. She has to make a choice of either helping him or turning him in. The fact that she is Jewish doesn't help the matter. If it was cleaned up a bit...this book would be a good one.

This is my favorite book of all time. I love the characters, the story line and the historical facts. Patty is a strong girl who is out of place in her small town and unappreciated. Anton is sweet and understanding and helps Patty realize that she is worth something.
It's a tear jerker. You better have a box of tissues with you when you read this book because you're gonna cry! I highly recommend this book. I love everything about it.

My daughter is now too older and far too accomplished a reader in her own right to need or want me to read to her, but I wish I had known of this when we were still reading together. I read this for a couple of reasons. As a native of Little Rock I wanted to read what is perhaps the most celebrated juvenile novel to have come out of my home state. Second, I have seen it highly praised and wanted to see if the praise was justified.

The praise was indeed justified. The novel is about a 12-year-old Jewish girl living in a small fictional town in northeastern Arkansas named Jenkinsville. As far as I can guess it is somewhere between Forrest City and Memphis. Wynne is mentioned as a nearby town. Looking at a map I would guess Jenkinsville is approximately where Parkin, Arkansas is. The protagonist of the novel is Patty Bergen, who is as isolated as a child can be. Her mother is unrelentingly critical of her while her father is both dismissive and physically abusive. At the time of the action of the novel she is virtually friendless as well, with most of her friends off at Baptist summer camp in the Ozarks (as any Arkansas Baptist would know, Siloam Springs). And as a member of the only Jewish family in town, she feels religious alienation as well. In the course of the novel only a few people seem friendly toward her at all. Her grandparents in Memphis give her a kind of love that her parents deny her. The black family maid and cook acts as a sort of real parent that her parents seem incapable of being. A Memphis newspaper reporter accords a level of respect to her that few others seem capable of. And, surprisingly, the town sheriff seems truly compassionate. But most of all a young twenty-year-old German prisoner of war helps her more than anyone else believe that she is "a person of worth." The book is filled with ironies as the two people who help her most with her sense of self-esteem are a black maid and a German prisoner, just as it is ironic that his is most aided by that same black maid and a young Jewish girl.

This is a deeply affecting, moving novel. Patty is a deeply flawed, yet wonderfully realistic character. She has a habit of telling petty lies that partly serve to garner her respect that others deny her and partly to force others to pay attention to her. The scene in which she is forced to go for a horrible perm on a blisteringly hot day is a chillingly vivid and realistic portrait of what would seem like hell to a small girl.

As others have noted, this is on many levels a sad book. But it is also, I think, an optimistic one. One can't help but believe that Anton, Patty's German soldier, was right: Patty is a person of worth. It is difficult to believe that she didn't turn out well after the events of the novel and that what made this possible for her was what others helped her realize about herself. In the short run, one imagines things got worse for her. As Ruth, the black maid, told her, her parents were "irregular" or "seconds," meaning that just as some pieces of clothing were sold cheaply because they didn't measure up, so Patty's parents never had and never would measure up. One can sense that Patty's home life remained bleak and unhappy, but that she still was going to turn out all right. She was, she had learned, a person of worth.

I recommend this to adults as well as younger readers, but I especially recommended parents reading it to their children. It isn't just a great read, it raises a host of difficult and fascinating questions.

Note: I was right! I just read an article about Bette Greene and learned that she was raised in Parkin, Arkansas. I think it is safe to assume that Parkin is the real Jenkinsville.

This is a great book. Any young girl with a romance streak will be drawn in by the forbidden love element. But this isn't just a dumb romance novel. Patty has to choose between her family and community and Anton. Great coming of age story. Still one of my favorites!

I first read this book in high school and wanted to reread it through the eyes of a grown up who studied World War II. It correctly describes the American south during the war and America's overall sentiment against the Nazi war machine. Although some of the material is somewhat boring and may be considered unnecessary, the overall theme is well addressed. Due to its age, the story may be antiquated for today's youth, but it is still a useful tool for English and History teachers to use for illustration.

It ws sweet, touching and a true love story with out being filled with pointless lust

Do you ever think that a Jewish girl would help a Nazis during World War Two? I wouldn't even consider it until I read this realistic fiction book. Patty, a twelve year old Jewish girl, lived in a small town in Arkansas, nothing ever happened there, until the government decided to out a prison camp there for the Nazis. Patty's parents were hard on her and her only friend was her nanny Ruth. Patty was working at her dad's store when she met one of the prisoners there, he was very nice and she hoped to meet him again. One day she was outside and there he was, it was Anton! She hid him in her attic and spent time with him every day. When it was finally time for him to leave she insisted that she would come with him but he wouldn't let her. Patty's dad came running in, two detectives were with him, was Anton o.k.?
I thought that this book was a little blah. Although this book sounds exciting it was very slow. I would not recommend this book to anyone who likes exciting books because, most of the book was about Patty's depressing life and how her parents hated her. However I think that an older audience might like this book because, they may be able to relate to the hard times Patty had. Also they may remember how people judged other people by the color of their skin. This book had some very diverse issues. The title of this book makes it sound like a real page turner but, it wasn't. The book took a very long time to set the mood at the beginning of the book. Although some parts were exciting, others weren't . For each exciting page there were twenty dull ones. The story was very hard to concentrate on. During most of the book nothing happened so that gave my mind a lot of time to wander so, once something exciting happened I was lost. One of the surprises in the story were that the reporter that Patty met was still friends with her after she found out what Patty had done. The reporter sent Patty her own subscription to the news paper when she was at the reformatory.

To be honest, between the forced dialogue and the constant, graphic child abuse scenes, there's not a lot of content here. In fact, I dare say the abuse doesn't even progress the story, but uses shock value to keep readers interested. The love is fake, the story never has any hope, and the ending is an outrage. Nothing is solved, nothing is concluded - it's all just so the author can sell the next book. No, thank you.