Cirrus@Austlit

'Robin's life is spiralling out of control. His father [is a] tyrant, his mother's disappeared and the wrong girl's luring him into her web... Intolerable images keep flashing through his head. What does Robin really know about his past? Are there clues in his own writing? And what secrets lie within the frozen forest?

'Paul Jennings' first novel for older readers is a stunning and original network of crossing trails with combine to tell the dark, tense and ultimately uplifting story about a boy who dares to stare into the spider holes of his own mind.' (Publisher's blurb)

'It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger and her younger brother are being taken by their mother to live with a foster family outside Munich. Liesel's father was taken away on the breath of a single, unfamiliar word - Kommunist - and Liesel sees the fear of a similar fate in her mother's eyes. On the journey, Death visits the young boy, and notices Liesel. It will be the first of many near encounters. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.'

[Source: Libraries Australia. Sighted 30/10/08]