Once by Morris Gleitzman is the story of a young Jewish boy who is determined to escape the orphanage he lives in to save his Jewish parents from the Nazis in the occupied Poland of the Second World War. Everybody deserves to have something good in their life. At least Once. Once I escaped from am orphanage to find Mum and Dad. Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house. Once I made a Nazi with a toothache laugh. My name is Felix. This is my story. Once is the first in a series of children's novels about Felix, a Jewish orphan caught in the middle of the Holocaust, from Australian author Morris Gleitzman - author of Bumface and Boy Overboard. The next books in the series Then, Now and After are also available from Puffin.
"He imagines, his parents still to be there, and then he’s imagining how they would like him to be and how they brought him up to be, and that surely is also the basis of how he survived this huge brutality. Despite the horrors and danger he maintains his morality and courage, risking his life to protect the younger child Zelda. Amazingly, Morris Gleitzman’s trademark humour shines through this dark subject matter. Here, too, is the reminder of humanity in the midst of its opposite. “Morris Gleitzman’s trademark humour shines through this dark subject matter” When I was writing The Other Side of Truth , part of my research was to talk to child psychotherapists about how some children come through terrible situations. So, I went to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (now named Freedom From Torture), and I spoke to the wonderful child therapist Sheila Melzak. I learned that it is those children who understand that it is not them personally being targeted who survive with the least permanent damage. They understand that they have been unfortunate to be caught up in a terrible situation. They have an idea of the bigger picture. In these books, there is a kindness, a generosity, love ultimately triumphs over hate. These books are coming from a position of realising that in order to survive the terrors of war, and the suffering that human beings can inflict on each other, you do need some kind of moral centre of your own."
