The Orphan Rescue

Award-winning Canadian children’s writer Anne Dublin has created in The Orphan Rescue, an exciting family rescue story in the real world. Dublin constructs her story from her father’s story of a Jewish family, a boy aged 7 and his sister 12, living in the small town of Sosnowiec, Poland in 1937 (before WWII). Fortified by maps and real details of a poor family’s life and of a Jewish orphanage and factory, Dublin says in her Afterword, “l wrote the story inspired by the events of the time and because the experiences of the characters are relevant to young people today.”

Miriam is determined to rescue her younger brother David when their desperately poor grandfather places him into a Jewish orphanage for his care. Even before she can rescue him, David is taken to a factory for dangerous and dirty work. An orphanage boy Ben, who had not been kind to David, wants to redeem himself and so works with Miriam to plot David’s way out. Hurdles abound as does humor, but the message is clear at the end: “Sometimes a person must do something wrong in order to correct a bigger wrong.”

This is a warm and charming tale of family closeness with wonderful illustrations by Qin Leng.