My review of Beetle Bunker by Robert Elmer...

As promised, here it is...



Beetle Bunker is, IMHO, even more interesting than it's predecessor. It's fresh, action packed, and continues the saga from book one of The Wall series. Now Erich (from book one) is an adult and he's working in a hospital. His little sister, stricken with polio as a young child and unable to walk without braces, is almost a teenager and very assertive for a young girl. She knows what she wants...and will let nothing hinder her quest. She longs for freedom. Freedom in the west. But she's stuck in the east section of Berlin, the communist sector. So when she finds a bunker from WWII with a Volkswagen Beetle inside, a flicker of hope shines in the darkness. She devises a plan along with a mysterious boy her age named Willi, who has terrible vision and wears very thick glasses.

Many times while reading Beetle Bunker I totally forgot I was reading a children's story. I felt sucked into the book like I did when I read Jack Cavanaugh's post WWII series about communist Germany. Robert Elmer has a gift for writing children's novels with such depth that they stick with you. I remember reading Night by Eli Weisel as a child and I still remember every detail of that book even without the same redeeming message that Beetle Bunker contains. All of the values you want children to learn are in this wonderful story and I applaud Robert Elmer for bringing some dark portions of world history to light. May our children never forget... Beetle Bunker was published by Zonderkids (Zondervan) and released in September 2006.