Waiting for Anya

This book got my heart deeply from the very first chapter.It is about a boy named Jo.His father was sent to war and was later a prisoner-of-war for a long time.This period is during the Second World War.Jo misses his father very much.One day,he was watching his sheep and felt like sleeping.He drifts into sleep leaving his sheep unattended.He wakes up to hear Rouf(his dog)barking and the sheep bleating.As Rouf was barking,Jo saw a bear.Panicstrikken,he ran down to the village and yelled for help.The men in the village came rushing out and were very excited as they had never shot a bear.Once they had shot the bear,they predicted that it was a female.Jo immediately went up to search for Rouf and finds him near a bear cub.Coincidentally,he met a man whom he had never seen but yet he recognised the man's face.The man offered the bear cub some milk and talked with Jo as if he knew him.Suddenly the man asked him to forget that day and not to tell anyone about what happened that day.Jo promises.Later he found himself helping the man named Benjamin to send Jewish children over to Spain.When Jo's little town was occupied by the German and more and more patrols were being held,it is hard to smuggle the children up into the mountains of Spain.I felt very anxious for Jo and Benjamin.Benjamin is also waiting for his daughter,Anya be able to arrive at the village.Will Anya be able to arrive at the little village? Will Jo and Benjamin and Jo be able to smuggle the children over? Read this book.

What a shame that this excellent novel has been, for several years, sitting on my shelf, completely forgotten, until a couple hours ago. I fully enjoyed reading it. The characters were complex yet realistic. I loved the relations among the characters, the wide spectrum of topics it concerns, and the bittersweet ending. A superb book for people of all ages.

The book Waiting For Anya was very well written. It is a story about a boy named Jo who is a shepard in France during World War II. He finds out that an old widow who lives in his town (The "Black Widow") has, along with her son-in-law been hiding Jews from the Germans. The story gets complicated as twenty-two German soldiers move into Jo's village. Jo is swept up in the Jew's crisis and is determinded to help them escape. The story further unravels as Jo's father (a POW) comes home. Time is running out for the Jewish children. Jo's bravery, and the heartbreaking conclusion make this a wonderful book for people of all ages to read.

I have only cried while reading two books. This was one of them. Though about the Holocaust, this story is not a history lesson. But you do learn another side of a very complicated time period. The well-developed characters brought the story to life for me. I've read it many times and always find something new in each reading.

I first read this book when I was twelve, and I've picked it up nearly every year since then. It has unfortunately been deemed an "adventure" story, but it is not. Nor is it a Holocaust story. It is a novel that goes deep into the human condition and touches on aspects of friendship, death, love, growing up, and human decency. It is filled with characters who are real, characters who overlook their time and place, and ultimately sacrifice themselves for what they believe in. The book is sad but not morbid; poignant but not sentimental. I have gone on to read so many other books, but I have always come back to this one with a love and respect I have for few other books--children's or otherwise.