'Courage & Defiance' tells story of heroic Danes in WWII
Critically acclaimed author Deborah Hopkinson has written more than 40 award-winning books. Mainly a historical nonfiction writer, Hopkinson began her career as an author by composing childrens picture books.
I started doing it when my daughter was little; shes a teacher now, Hopkinson says. I always wanted to be a writer, and as a young mom when I read picture books to my daughter, I had a full-time job it was something short, a way to begin and still raise kids.
Hopkinson, who lives near Lake Oswego, published around 35 books while working full time. Shes the type who stays up all night reading, and would rather be at home writing than traveling. Hopkinson admits she uses plastic garage storage bins to stack her research books for each novel, but many still lie piled around her desk despite her organization efforts.
Her latest book, Courage & Defiance ($17.99, Scholastic Press), is aimed for a preteen audience, ages 8 to 12.
Using anecdotes researched from historical documents, Hopkinson immerses the reader in
real-time World War II in Denmark.
One interesting thing about researching World War II is that, though there are lots of first-person accounts with older vets, over time, memories fade, Hopkinson says. I looked for memoirs and first-person accounts people had given close to the time that it happened.
She follows along with spies affiliated with the Allies and members of the Danish resistance. Some are young students who begin by blowing up German cars and speeding away on bicycles, growing momentum as their country, with a small military, couldnt contend with the powerful Nazis.
In this one, I really wanted to tell the story of the Danish resistance in a way that I think means more to young readers: to get to know some of the people involved, Hopkinson says.
She took the opportunity to meet one of the characters, Niels Skov, herself before he died at age 94 last January.
When I met him, he was in a wheelchair and very ill at the time, says Hopkinson, who wrote about Skovs first attempts at resistance when he used his grandfathers handmade screwdriver to rip open German cars gas tanks and ignite them. His wife said, Well Niels, you still have this old screwdriver, dont you? They brought it out and I took the picture.
The screwdriver appears on page 26 of Courage & Defiance.
I read a lot and feel I get to know the people involved, and then try to choose the anecdotes that, for instance with Niels, illustrate how individuals acted on their own, says Hopkinson.
By this time, at the age of 94, his descriptions of what happened were much more brief, Hopkinson says. It becomes a story thats told over time, whereas writing close to the events the accounts are much more immediate.
Courage & Defiance is one of three books in her WWII series, the others being about submarines and the cholera epidemic. Hopkinson makes appearances at schools, talking to students about her work and research.
The questions for young readers today is: What are the choices we make? Hopefully, not that kind of a life or death situation, but we do make choices every day on the stance we take, Hopkinson says. Thats what the young men and women in this book did, what all of the Danes did when the Jews of Denmark were faced with deportation: there was that spontaneous reaction to rescue 7,000 people.