Adolescent Novel - Sophie

*THEN*

Morris Gleitzman has been writing books for adolescent audiences for years, mostly quirky funny stories such as Puppy Fat and Misery Guts. But Gleitzman's latest work is a series including titles Once, Then, Now and After. I came across Then in the library and not realising it was the second in the series, was drawn to read it after reading the blurb,

I had a plan for me and Zelda
Pretend to be someone else
Find new parents
Be safe forever
Then the Nazis came.

I was curious to see how Gleitzman would approach the topic of the Holocaust, and how he would create a narrative for adolescents about it. Then explores themes of friendship, family and persecution through the eyes of Felix, an eleven year old Jewish boy living in Poland. The language, the sentence structure and perspective all reflect the purpose of the text, which is to teach children about the Holocaust. Then does not follow a typical narrative structure because we are presented with the complication before we are orientated with our characters. There are many complications throughout the story including being chased by Nazi soldiers and almost being discovered as a Jewish boy pretending to be German. The main characters of this story are Felix and six year old Zelda, who escaped a train headed for a Nazi death camp. They consider themselves family and this is reflected in the tenor of the text, as is their age. Then is told through the innocence of a child's eyes as Felix and Zelda are faced with death and violence everyday. Often Felix starts a sentence with, 'You know when...' and then tells of a horrific experience that few people could relate to, such as burying your friend 'under some ferns and wildflowers'. The field of the text is Poland where Nazis have taken over and all Jewish people are persecuted and send to death camps. Then is narrated in first person by Felix and this reflects the mode of the text. Gamble and Yates discuss that one of the challenges of '...using a first-person child narrator is that the relative inexperience of the narrator makes it difficult for them to reflect on the big themes and issues'. Granted there is minimal reflection on why Hitler and the Nazis treated the Jewish people the way they did, but this may be explored in the previous book (as I have not read it yet I do not know). This is why I recommend this text be used as part of guided reading, so that the teacher can facilitate discussion about these complex issues. I believe the narration style used is imperative to the text as it would be far to grim if the story weren't told through a child's eyes. 

Gletizman himself says, 'this story is my imagination trying to grasp the unimaginable'. On his website he says that these stories came from his imagination, but that he could not have written them without reading many books about the Holocaust first. It would be interesting to study this series as guided reading texts as they would raise many questions for students. They would also provide a cross-curricular connection to a topic about this period in history.
While it is a very confronting text, I could not help but keep reading. The narration style is critical to this text because it draws the reader in. You become so attached to the characters and dread what the story holds for Felix and Zelda. Then would be appropriate to use with students year seven onwards.