Product Description

Rose Blanche was the name of a group of young German citizens who, at their peril, protested against the war. Like them, Rose observes all the changes going on around her which others choose to ignore. She watches as the streets of her small German town fill with soldiers. One day she sees a little boy escaping from the back of a truck, only to be captured by the mayor and shoved back into it. Rose follows the truck to a desolate place out of town, where she discovers many other children, staring hungrily from behind an electric barbed wire fence. She starts bringing the children food, instinctively sensing the need for secrecy, even with her mother. Until the tide of the war turns and soldiers in different uniforms stream in from the East, and Rose and the imprisoned children disappear for ever ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14178 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 32 pages

Customer Reviews

Amazing, wonderful, awe inspiring yet deeply sad
What a fantastic, wonderful book - but not really for young children. The concepts are far too challenging. This is one for 9 to 99 year olds!

I am a year 6 teacher, and part of my History curriculum covers life during World War 2. Although we barely touch on the effects of the war for children abroad, this book covers a lot of it and introduces children to several challenging and disturbing concepts - thus tying together History and PSHE. It covers similar ideas to 'The Boy in Striped Pyjamas', but in a shorter and more instantly accessible format.

Rose Blanche is a young girl who discovers a concentration camp very near to where she lives. She visits regularly, not really understanding what she sees. The ending is sad, but the book is amazing!

A review of Rose Blanche
This book allows you to understand what it was like for a German child during the war. I think this book is very good because many books are about English children or sometimes not children, but adults.
The pictures in the book are extraordinary because of the colours as they are very dull, but they great brighter.
At the end of the story Ian McEwen describes the Spring arrival as a little invasion. This is a good example of using imagery to create effects.
This book also shows that lots of children were in camps and did die and were not evacuated like the children in England.
I think this book would be good for an older junior age child who is learning about the war.

War through the eyes of a child
When Rose Blanche discovers a concentartion camp in the woods near her home in a little German town she doesn't quite understand what she has found, but she knows she must help the starving children there and keep their secret from the adults, even her mother. Haubting and strangley beautiful book where the pictures tell the story but the simple childlike language just adds to the tradedy of the inevitable outcome. As much a book for adults as it is for children.