That news is exciting for everyone in the town, but Patty feels lonely rather than excited: all of her friends have gone away to Baptist church camp, leaving Patty, whose family is Jewish, on her own for the summer. While Patty is on her summer vacation, the War Department opens a Prisoner of War camp in her town to house German prisoners of war. Summer of My German Soldier takes place in a small, racially-tense town in Arkansas during World War II, when our protagonist Patty Bergen is 12 years old. Even as plenty of captivating, well-researched historical fiction continues to be released for young readers, this book remains my favorite. That’s where I found my favorite book in the genre, Bette Greene’s 1973 novel Summer of My German Soldier. I read through all of the Little House, American Girl, and Dear America series by the end of the third grade, at which point I really jumped into the vast body of MG historical fiction. Ever since elementary school I’ve enjoyed the escape of visiting a different time and place, of meeting characters who are different than me yet not too different, who live through things we only touched on in history class. I have always loved middle grade historical fiction.
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