"I am David"

 I picked up this one, mainly because I have seen it used in the library at school - for the Grade 6's reading list, I think. 

"I am David", written by Anne Holm, tells the story of a boy who escapes from a war time camp.  He has no memories of the outside world, so must learn many new things while he fends for himself as he makes his way through much of Europe.

I found the internal monologue of David to be really fascinating.  The author has done a wonderful job of articulating some very profound thoughts from David that help him to decide on his actions.  He thinks through things like "What makes a person truly free?" and "In what way am I responsible for my own action?"  Holm still gives these thought processes with a child-like quality, which is quite enchanting to read. 

I would gauge the book ideally to be for an audience of 9 to 13 years old.  Of course, not only that age, I'm in my 30's and I enjoyed a great deal. I must say, I found the lack of details [we are never told where the camp was] to be a little frustrating.  And the plausibility stretched a little thin in places [he travels through Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark, but never a single mention of the war!].  But I would think to a child audience, this lack of context would not be very worrying.

I will certainly be strongly encouraging my kids to read this, I think it's a great one for them.