Skip to content | Skip to institutional links

Common menu bar links

Archived Content

This archived Web page remains online for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. This page will not be altered or updated. Web pages that are archived on the Internet are not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards. As per the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, you can request alternate formats of this page on the Contact Us page.

English Titles

		FINDING SOPHIE IRENE N. WATTS TORONTO: TUNDRA BOOKS, 2002. 136 P. ISBN 0887766137 AGES 10 TO 13
Finding Sophie Source

At the beginning of the Second World War, Sophie Mandel, a seven-year-old Jewish German child has been sent by her parents to London to escape the Nazis. For the next seven years she is cared for by a friend of her parents -- her endlessly empathetic Aunt Em. Despite the hardships of wartime, Sophie carves out a fulfilling life for herself in England. With the passage of time, the notion that she is "on loan" to her Aunt Em fades. The arrival of V-E day, while marking the end of the war, creates a conflict in Sophie's life. She must face the possibility of being reunited with parents she hardly knows, and the return to a Germany she does not remember and a language she no longer speaks.

As in the companion books Good-bye Marianne and Remember Me, author Irene N. Watts draws on her personal experience of the Kindertransport, the train taking Jewish children out of Germany in 1938 to safety in Britain. These books have garnered her numerous awards including the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People and the Isaac Frischwasser Memorial Award for Young Adult Fiction.

-MR