“’ Sometimes,’ he says [Barney], his voice shaking as well,’ parents can’t protect their kids even though they love them more than anything in the world.”

In 1942, the protagonist Felix is a Jew disguised in a Catholic orphanage in Poland. When the orphanage’s Jewish books are burnt, Felix decides he must find his parents in order to save their bookshop.

After leaving the orphanage, Felix is imminently imprisoned in a ghetto (which is menacingly patrolled by anti-Semitic Nazi officers) with other Jews and a girl he saves from a radiant inferno.
In the ghetto, Felix is acquainted with the bearded dentist, Barney who performs his dentistry on Nazi officers to earn food.

Eventually, the Jews of the ghetto are taken prisoner on a crammed railcar which the Nazis nail shut! Eventually, they get out by battering through the walls. However, some choose not to risk their lives against terrifying machine guns and stay in the carriage.

Esteemed childrens author (20 years ago), Morris Gleitzman’s Once is a novella designed to enlighten a younger audience on the goings-on of World War Two. It is appropriated from authentic accounts of Jews victimized at the time. Each chapter’s starting with “Once…” provides a mystery to the reader; what will follow? Usually, I detest the first-person perspective in literature as it is not happening to me as the pronouns would suggest. Still, the way Morris Gleitzman incorporates Felix’s thoughts and actions with facts of the time is phenomenal. Furthermore, the chapters' conciseness encourages the reader to continue reading rather than stop partway through a chapter.