THEO

Harrison debuts with this rousing tale of a child puppeteer in Nazi-occupied Greece. When the Germans begin rounding up orphans for deportation, Theo, ten, and his older brother, Socrates, flee Athens for a small mountain village. On the way, Socrates attempts an act of sabotage and is shot. Enraged, Theo joins the resistance, working with arms smugglers, distributing forbidden newspapers, taking part in Operation Elijah (a plan to rescue Athens’s Jews), setting explosives, and in a public act of defiance, putting on a shadow puppet show in which humpbacked trickster/hero Karagiozis overcomes bumbling caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini. The author lays a catalog of tragedies and atrocities over a vividly detailed picture of the beliefs, customs, and textures of Greek daily life, portraying an old, stable culture in which “the past was alive in the present,” and in which the Nazis are regarded as only the latest in a long line of troubles. It’s an inspiring story of the apparently powerless battling for freedom in the face of savage reprisals. (glossary) (Fiction. 11-13)