Middle Grade Monday: Once by Morris Gleitzman

Image: Penguin Random House UK

Once by Morris Gleitzman. Once/ Then/ Now/ After series. 160 p. Puffin/ Penguin Random House, February, 2006. (Own)

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Middle Grade Monday features Once by Australian author Morris Gleitzman. Felix is our naive, young and unreliable narrator. He believes he has been living in a Catholic orphanage, though he is Jewish, while his parents are away at a bookseller's convention. He runs away to try and find them just as the Nazis arrive to round up the occupants. Suspense builds as he encounters the horrors of Nazi occupation and slowly comes to realize the danger he is in. Each chapter begins with the word, "Once." They are short and pack an emotion wallop.

Once was published in 2006. It was followed by Then in 2009. In Now, published in 2010, Felix is a grandfather living in Australia, but Gleitzman returned to the 1940s in After (2012) and Soon (2015). While researching information for this post, I discovered that in 2018, Felix's story was continued in Maybe and that a final volume, Always, is in the works. Every students who reads Once, continues the series. I have some ordering and reading to do!