I think this is the very best presentation of World War II for children eight to fifteen. The characters are believable, the setting realistic, and not only does it deal accurately with historical matters, but helps children--and me--understand God as well as the meaning and reason of suffering in the world. It is also quite exciting. It encourages children to live up to the heroic sacrifice and service of the characters. Oh, yes, and it's sometimes quite funny. I have now read this book about four times and encouraged many others to read it, too.

As for "taking the Lord's name in vain," I don't see it that way. When the person says, "By God, [I will save that child]" he is simply saying "as God is my witness." Not that I would encourage one to do that: Jesus taught us to say a simple yes or no. But I think it's a bit judgmental to condemn the book for a quotation in the introduction which most children won't read at all, and that isn't particularly immoral any way.

Yes, the book is about Catholics. Many Christians in the Netherlands were. Let us unite, Protestants and Catholics, in serving and loving God, especially whenever an atheistic or pagan regime threatens our freedom and our lives.

A lovely story about resilience, faith, courage and love. An example of treating our neighbor with compassion and caring, of seeing the humanity in others. We found it educational and edifying.

We read this book aloud as a family and loved it! It is one of our all time favorites and we enjoyed the many fine examples of faith put into practice during WW2. Beautiful!

Bethlehem books seem to (?) print quite a few Catholic based titles - I'll be reading the reviews & excerpts here more intently before I purchase any more of their books.

We were not in the mind frame to have to navigate through a book endowed with the Catholic faith, hence the two stars, we just wanted to read a story about events in Holland in WWII - we read aloud God's Smuggler instead.

An excellent story based on a real family who operated a windmill in occupied Holland during WWII. The family display courage, faith, and flexibility in a dangerous situation. I was quite surprised at the nasty review already turned in on this book; the family is not Roman Catholic, simply not American Protestant. I work at an international school for missionary children, and no parent ever had a complaint about the book.