Historical Fiction: No Hero for the Kaiser

The book No Hero for the Kaiser by Rudolf Frank is about a fourteen-year-old Jan Kubitsky, the only survivor after the Russian and German troops raze his small Polish town in September 1914. He is adopted as a mascot by the German unit. Although his own father is fighting for the Russians, Jan soon feels loyalty and affection for his German friends, and again and again he manages to save them so that they begin to see him as an almost superhuman. Jan is witness to all of the horrors of war as he travels with the battery to both fronts. When the men conceive a plan to reward Jan by making him a German citizen, the idea is eagerly seized upon as good publicity by the high command. Jan, however, does not wish to be a symbol for the German army, and he quietly disappears. Frank's novel, originally published in 1931, banned by the Nazis and reissued in Germany in 1979, is an antiwar novel.The message of the author is steer clear of war. The author discusses the repercussions of war and the affects it has on the people. The book would be appropriate for Grades six through nine. I liked this book because I am Polish and my family has had personal experience with World War I and II. My grandparents were in concentration camps and I thought this story really brought out the terrible affects war has on its people.