Once I escaped from an orphanage to find my 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.

A friend told me about these lovely books a long while ago. I love the covers. The simplicity, the intrigue of the soft pictures: a boy on a barbed-wired tightrope,  a boy and a girl on that same tightrope, a locket in the shape of a heart. Heather, you should have tied me up and forced me to read these tender books much sooner?

I want to expand my students’ thinking and get them thinking about the world beyond their neighborhoods. I want them to learn what empathy is and the value of it in their own lives. In past years, I’ve taken students to the Holocaust Museum in downtown Dallas. These books are a sweet reminder of why that is such a worthy activity.

The author reads the first chapter: “Once I was living in an orphanage“

Tagged: books, reading