Polish / Poland
Mała wojna
(Little war)
Ryrych, Katarzyna
(text)
Rusinek, Joanna
(illus.)
Łódź: Wydawnictwo Literatura, 2019. – 79 p.
ISBN 978-83-7672-655-7
World War II (1939-1945) | Lviv | Hiding place | Humanity | Rescue
Reading age: 8+
White Ravens issue: 2020
Set during World War II, this story follows Janek, the first-person narrator, and his sister Lilka, who live with their mother and grandmother in the city of Lwów (Ukraine’s Lviv today), which has been Soviet-occupied since 1939. When the children hear strange (human) sounds coming from behind the bookshelf at the home of their music teacher Pan Stefan, and they notice more and more oddities, they assume they are in for an adventure. Their grandmother tells them that Pan Stefan is protecting some children by allowing them to hide at his place. She survived World War I and deportation to Siberia and calmly and earnestly explains why war is not a game of hide-and-seek. In “Mała wojna”, Katarzyna Ryrych, an important voice in Polish children’s literature, laconically describes the hardships that define everyday life for families during wartime. The gripping story is part of the series “Adult wars – Children’s stories”, which is well worth reading. Since 2010, the series has issued books that venture to broach the terrible realities of life during wartime. [KW]