I picked this one up as part of my Cybils summer reading, recommended by fellow panelist Debbie. Adam Gidwitz’s stunning The Inquisitor’s Tale (which won a Newbury Honor and the Sidney Taylor Award, as well as the audiobook winning the Cybils award the one year we had an audiobook category) is a book that still resonates with me. Naturally, I was excited to see this World War II story.

Max in the House of Spies
by Adam Gidwitz

Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2024.

ISBN ‎ 978-0593112083

Read from a library copy. Ebook and audiobook available from Libby.

Before our story opens, we are instructed to forget everything we know about World War II – because the people of 1939 did not know what was coming. Our main character, Max Bretzfeld, is just angry about being sent away from Berlin. Sure, school has gone radically downhill since the Nazi party came into power and started replacing the curriculum with propaganda and open bullying of Jewish students like Max. But he’s never lived anywhere else, and his parents seem a whole lot less competent at survival than he is. We learn in the opening chapter that Max is a genius who can build radios out of scraps – and that two different but identical-looking and outspoken immortal beings, a kobold named Berg and and a dybbuk named Stein, have attached themselves to him.

Max is fortunate enough to wind up in the home of the Montagus, a wealthy Jewish family in London, though it still takes a long time to feel at home and attitudes towards Jews in London are nearly as bad as they were in Berlin. Reactions in his host family towards this vary from trying to fit in to trying to hide – the host brother his own age works hard for a spot on the rugby team, while the younger brother is just a victim of bullies. Max, though, stands up to the bullies and orchestrates elaborate pranks in revenge – managing to harness pigeons to sabotage a much-anticipated school rugby match. When the bombings of London start, Max – now 12 – learns that one of his adoptive uncles is a spy. (The other one is a table tennis fanatic, socialist, and amateur film maker.) From there, he determines to do everything in his power to get trained as a spy himself so that he can check up on his parents and do whatever possible to bring the Nazis down. Just before he is sent off to train as a spy, the socialist host uncle warns him that the British “find a resource and exploit it… We wring it dry, till it’s all used up. Or dead… In this case, Max, you are the resource.” Once in training, Max works with a bunch of old white men and one very energetic young woman on a tight deadline, either to be good enough to be a spy in Germany or to fail and return to his host family and safety.

Talking about World War II from a Jewish perspective for a middle grade audience is something that hasn’t been attempted nearly as often as it should be, most likely because of the daunting nature. Most often, I’d expect something slow and sad. This, while Max definitely has plenty to be sad about, is an adventure story that nevertheless is open about the horrible things being done to Jews, even though Max and his host family don’t know that details and those in power in London don’t at all believe the stories of the worst things happening in Germany. Berg and Stein are mischievous creatures, pulling their own pranks, making commentary that sometimes gives voice to what we as readers might want to say in the situation and often reveals their inhumanity and lack of compassion for the human condition to hilarious effect. Their presence combined with Max’s determination and the support of at least some of the people around keep the story from bogging down despite the grimness of the period. Though we see the world from Max’s perspective, the many perspectives of the world around him also make this a much more nuanced portrait of the time period than we usually see.

Full disclosure: this is the first book in a duology and ends on a cliffhanger, so to experience Max’s adventures after his training, we’ll have to wait until Max in the Land of Lies comes out in 2025. For another excellent speculative World War II middle grade tale, try Hollow Chest by Brita Sandstrom.