Maybe A Fox VS. A Night Divided

A Night Divided: We gave this book 8/10. It inspired us to read more historical fiction which isn't a genre one member of our group has read a lot before. It helped us better understand real life situations that kids our age went through and all the problems that really happened in our world. Gerta and her brother Fritz proved that they were risk takers but for a good cause. They didn't accept that they would be separated from their families and they went to do something about it even though it was really dangerous. Gerta and her best friend Anna had a lot of ups and downs in the book. It was a pretty realistic relationship as they started out doing lots of things that girls this age would do. It was interesting to see just how much impact the government could have on individuals and families and their daily lives. This book was slow in the first half but the second half it was full of suspense and really exciting. We really wanted to know if they'd manage to escape and who might actually die while attempting to leave. The author did a good job of stretching this suspense out and making the second half of the book a real page turner. Other kids should read this book so that they learn about the problems kids our age faced in history. If they haven't read historical fiction before it should make them really want to read more of this genre. We had questions about what their Dad had actually done to start all the issues with the government and his family in the first place. Why did the government feel they had to control people so much and how they managed to keep such detailed files on so many people. We wanted to know more about how they got this information and what Fritz was doing during the day. We also felt that there could have been a bit more historical detail about this time period as it isn't a time we knew a lot about.

Maybe a Fox: We gave this book 9/10. It is realistic fiction which we all really love. We really liked how the author told the story from the point of view of Jules and the fox. It was sometimes confusing but it did help us relate to the little tiny bit of fantasy that was included with the foxes story. This book really made us emotional! Especially when Jules was going, over and over how she could have tried to hold onto her sister before she disappeared. That part was a real tearjerker! It was also neat that the author included social media, like YouTube and made that a big part of the story. Social media is in all our lives so it was neat to see how it could be used to do good in our world. Questions that we were left with were about Sylvie's fate. While we were reading we really wanted to know what had actually happened to her. We also really wanted to know what happened to 'older brother' fox. It was neat how the author included spirit animals and made us think about alternate worlds. We loved how it made us think whether Sylvie's spirit was in the fox when she was born. We thought about how when Senna says she needs to find someone whether that was Jules or somebody else. It really talked about reality when the narrarator started talking about how Sam wished for his older brother to come back home over and over again, then he does come back and he seems as if Afganistan kept part of him and returned the rest of him. Zeke doesn't come back home with Elk and it makes Sam question all his wishes, if he wished for both of them to come back home then would Elk become the same person again. This book was a pretty fast and easy read and it really drew you in and kept you guessing. Maybe a Fox is our winner!