Honestly, as I read this I was thinking how it stacked up against last year's [b:The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club|25445456|The Boys Who Challenged Hitler Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club|Phillip M. Hoose|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1430245146s/25445456.jpg|42246997]. And I was thinking about how those saboteur Churchill Club boys were more exciting than the pamphleteer Scholl siblings. But then I got to the end of this book and BAM. Whoa. I teared up. I felt awful for thinking for even a minute that the White Rose story was tame by comparison. If I had known from the beginning how it ended for Sophie and Hans I think I would've read the story in a different light.

Beyond my personal reaction, I think this story is told with admirable precision (I read it in about an hour) which makes it appealing for younger readers. But there are some very rattling, morbid parts of the story that make me think it's generally best for 6th grade and up.

You could definitely have quite a discussion around the themes, particularly how the Scholl siblings both professed to know right from wrong by looking inside themselves. Do human beings have an innate sense of good and evil? Or can we only know what we're taught? Hans Scholl: "I'm searching for myself, just myself, because this much I do know; I'll only find the truth inside me." Sophie Scholl: "We carry all our standards within ourselves, only we don't look for them closely enough. Perhaps because they are the severest standards." ( )

In the heart of Germany, a student resistance movement called the White Rose took a courageous stand to denounce the Nazis.

“They could have chosen to throw bombs,” but the young members of the White Rose chose to oppose Nazi Germany with printed words. The clandestine student activists, including Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, wrote leaflets decrying Nazi atrocities, urging German citizens to resist the Nazi government, and denouncing the Nazi “dictatorship of evil.” Cranking out thousands of mimeographed leaflets at night in a secret cellar, the students proclaimed to Nazi leaders, “We are your bad conscience,” imperiling their lives. Among the wealth of good Holocaust literature available, Freedman’s volume stands out for its focus and concision, effectively placing the White Rose in its historical context, telling the story of Nazi Germany without losing the focus on the White Rose, and doing so in just over 100 pages. Archival photographs are effectively integrated into the text, and the typeface at times resembles the typewriter’s text on mimeographed leaflets, a nice design choice. The selected bibliography includes volumes for young readers and the superb German-language film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005).

A thorough and accessible introduction to the Holocaust and the students who dared to take a stand against evil. (source notes, picture credits, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

-Kirkus Review

I am so glad this book was published. ( )

What an incredible story of resistance and ideals. Tragic, inspiring, extremely well documented. ( )

This rich informational and well researched text tells the story of Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie who belonged to the Hitler Youth organization. Once older and with several friends, they formed the White Rose campaign as an active resistance to Nazi Germany. Source Notes, Selected Bibliography, Index.