Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and WWII

by Robert Matzen



This was either a WWII book tripped up by a personal history, or a biographical sketch overwhelmed by war history.

Condensed version: The occupation was really bad for the Dutch.  Then it was really bad some more.  Audrey was obsessed with dance.

I knew very little about the war in the Netherlands, or about the experience of civilians on the front lines, and for that reason I'm glad I read the book.  But what it really brought to life for me, in a small way, is what the citizens of Velp must have felt every day to an infinitely greater degree: Is this thing ever going to be over?


Also I spent almost the whole book thinking it was the other Hepburn.   (That's on me.)

Bears In The Night

To me, "I Can Read" is a death sentence for a good story.   A child might be able to read it, but would she want to? 

A story should be beautiful and satisfying, something to be enjoyed.  The best stories are, of course, also the most educational; but I doubt whether anyone wrote a good story by setting out to be educational first.   

So when my son produced an "I Can Read" title from the children's nook at our meat market, I inwardly groaned and pooh-poohed and rolled my sophisticated eyes.  The Berenstains wrote it?  Poor folks.  I hope they didn't suffer much.



It was nothing but prepositional phrases.



And it was marvelous.



You know what you can do with prepositional phrases?  You can tell the story of a bedful of bear cubs decide to go investigate a nighttime noise.  With prepositions you can get them out of bed, to the window, down the tree, and around the landscape.  Because there are a quantity of cubs, you can use the same prepositional phrases multiple times, craftily placed against the illustrations, to create a follow-the-leader scenario.  And you can use them all yet again when the bear cubs hastily conclude bed is the best place to be after all.

And  by combining your magical phrases with simple, exciting drawings you can fire a child's imagination, and maybe send him out the window and through the forest on a nighttime excursion of his own.