Soon

Morris Gleitzman's Soon is a tense, heartbreaking wartime story for 11 year olds about a boy who can't stop trying to help.

What happens

It's 1945 and the war is officially over. In the wrecked Polish city where Felix lives, it doesn't feel like it. People fight over food drops. Gangs of armed men hunt down anyone they've decided doesn't belong. Felix is Jewish, so he keeps very quiet about that.

He's thirteen and he wants to be a doctor. He owns two medical books and a medical bag that's really an old flour sack. He lives in a hidden flat with Gabriek, who mends locks and drinks too much cabbage vodka. Gabriek has one simple rule. Don't get involved.

Felix gets involved. He sets an old woman's broken finger in the middle of a scramble for bread. Then a woman running from gunmen pushes a bundle into his arms. It's a baby.

Felix tells it himself, and his voice is what makes it bearable. He's funny without trying to be. He worries about his bedside manner, calls the thugs pustules and thinks hard about the right professional thing to say. Every chapter opens with one of his hopes.

Before you hand this one over, know that it's very violent. People are shot on the page, including a young boy Felix is trying to save. He's then forced to patch up one of the gang. It's sudden and it's described plainly, and it sits at the very top of this shelf. It's for a reader who can take real history and wants to, ideally with a grown-up nearby to talk it over.

For that reader it's unforgettable. Felix is so good (and so stubborn about it) that you'll be rooting for him on every page.

It's the fourth book in Morris Gleitzman's series about Felix. The opening pages assume you know what he's already been through, so if your reader is new to him, start with Once.

What to read next

If they'd like more of that same voice in a gentler story, try Boy Overboard. Jamal and his sister Bibi play football in the desert in Afghanistan, where girls aren't allowed to join in and their parents are secretly running a school.