Blog: #kidlit Book of the Day

Code Name Kingfisher
by Liz Kessler (Author)
@ Amazon | Bookshop

Booktalk: Thirteen-year-old Liv’s beloved ninety-two-year-old grandmother, Oma, is moving into a home where she can be cared for as her dementia worsens. As Liv helps her father empty Oma’s house, she finds an old chest which opens up a whole world that Liv never knew about: the hidden world of Oma’s childhood.

Through the letters and other mementos, Liv learns that Oma, given name Mila, had a sister, Eva, that no one in Liv’s family ever knew about. In 1942, Mila and Eva are sent away from their parents to a non-Jewish family so they will survive the war. Twelve-year-old Mila believes that they will soon be reunited with their parents and go back to their normal lives, but fourteen-year-old Eva knows better, and soon gets involved in the Resistance. Eva takes on more and more dangerous assignments until a betrayal forces her to decide between running away with her sister or fully committing to mission. Tragedy strikes, and Mila goes to England on her own to restart her life from scratch, vowing never to talk about her childhood again.

In the present day, Liv reads how Mila builds something new from the shattered pieces of her childhood while giving beloved Oma all the support she can. Both Liv and Mila grapple with loyalty, family, and love as they discover what it means to be brave and go above and beyond to offer someone else a life of dignity, happiness, and freedom.

Snippet:

I’m in my bedroom, doing my homework, when the police car turns onto our road.

Instinctively, I pick up my phone and type a message to Karly. I hit send and go back to the window.

My phone pings a minute later. I open it and read Karly’s reply.

Is it the creepy guy at number fifty-four who we always thought turned hedgehogs into wigs?

I smile. Karly always knows how to make me laugh. My phone pings again.

Or maybe Gladys at sixty-two has finally been done for crimes against fashion.

I’m about to reply when a third text pings through.

Not that Miss Dressed-by-Dad knows anything about fashion.

This last one is followed by a row of laughing emojis.

It feels like she’s reached right out of the phone and slapped me. But I tell myself not to be silly.

Karly and I have been best friends forever. Since we first sat next to each other in Year Three. She’s always been the one with the loud personality. I’ve always been happy to let her be in charge. I’ve never really cared what we do; as long as we do it together, it’s always fun.

At least, it was always fun. Not so much recently. It changed when we started Year Eight last month and were put in different sets for some of our classes. Karly got in with a new group of girls and hasn’t had as much time for me lately.