Hideout

Heuck gracefully melds elements of fantasy and realism in another book (see Naomi's Road, above) about children and war. Rebecca is discovered alone, unable to remember her last name or anything about her parents. It is the middle of World War II, and the authorities send her off to an orphanage, but circumstances bring her to a cornfield, where she meets Sami. He hides in the field, living off the milky kernels, worried that he'll be taken off to the camps as his mother was. Sami possesses a rare imagination, able to transform their surroundings into mythical kingdoms with his stories. Even after she lives at the orphanage, Rebecca visits Sami and shares his concern about the camps, without knowing what she fears. The mouse-kings and rich meals the children imagine are far more real to them than battles and air raids; Heuck successfully projects an oddly innocent, surprisingly intuitive portrayal of war, through the eyes of a child. Ages 11-up. (March)