Harboring Hope: The True Story of How Henny Sinding Helped Denmark’s Jews Escape the Nazis

Focusing on Henny Sinding (b. 1921), daughter of a respected Royal Danish Navy commander, Hood’s expansive verse recounting of the WWII Danish resistance movement builds a strong sense of shared Danish values while encompassing Nazi Germany’s 1940 invasion and its deportation of Danish Jews after years of “peaceful occupation.” Compared to Pippi Longstocking for her compassion and unconventionality, and taught from childhood to maintain a “good inner moral compass,” Sinding was as a young woman instrumental in helping more than 800 people flee from occupied Denmark; she personally escorted 300 individuals to a 12–meter lighthouse supply boat, the Gerda III, which took them across the Øresund strait to safety in Sweden. Effectively unadorned free verse from Hood (Alias Anna) capably renders the suspense and danger in numerous scenes of Sinding at work. It also traces Denmark’s slow transformation from a stance of neutrality to becoming what Hitler described as “a model protectorate” to fighting back against German forces in August 1943. Numerous excerpts from Sinding’s and others’ first-person accounts personalize the history, while the format helps to funnel a wide breadth of material into an accessible narrative. Extensive back matter includes contextualizing information and historical photographs. Ages 10–up. Agent: Brenda Bowen, Book Group. (Mar.)