Once, by Morris Gleitzman

Today, let's introduce you a book written in such a good way that compltely defines children's mind, and adults crazy world too. That's "Once", by Morris Gleitzman. The time is the second world war; the atmosphere, the nazism walking across Europe and reaching everyone's life; and the place, Poland. The main character couldn't be better chosen: Felix is a child who lives in an orphanate and decides to scape to look for his parents, who are jews and run a bookshop, so you can imagine that the reason why they are not answering his letters is not that they are selling books around Europe but something really different. And here the story starts, in such a nice way, with the innocence of the eyes of someone who believes in people, who believes in goodness, and who will progressivly discover sometimes people and goodness don't come together and then suddenly you are frightened. A story that talks about the nazism topic in a different way, that shows us how parents are important to child and what a little man can do to get his dream and make the world a bit better in times when the world is being distroyed.

Here you have the sentences written in the cover of the book and the text in the back. If, after all, you are interested in it, go to the link below and Gleitzman will read the first capter just for you... You'll see is from an infantile web page because, in fact, he writes to children but that's not an infantile story, trust me and enjoy it!

Everybody deserves to have something good in their life.

At least once.

Once I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad.

Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house.

Once I made a Nazi with toothache laugh.

My name is Felix.

This is my story.



http://www.morrisgleitzman.com/books/fst_once_audio.html

Today just some opinions mixed. Lets talk about independence. Oh, yes, that fantastic word which reppresents thigs so different deppending on who talks. There's people who hear "independence" and immediately think about countries, states, having their own borders, showing the ID to get into the next country. There are others who think about personal freedom: saying what you want, not deppending on anyone else, giving opinion, criticizing evrything they want and correcting things they have said, they have done. That could be the most subjective meaning. Then we have adolescents, for who independence means being alone at home, or leaving from their parent's house and having their own one. Finally, I'm sure there are many, many other different ways of feeling independence. So you can add your opinion, if you want! Let's mix!