The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

Reviewed by Augusta Chen 

“I’m looking for my family. Ruth is the eldest - she’d be fifteen now, and tall and fair. Then Edek, he’d be thirteen. Bronia is the youngest - she’d be five.”

The Silver Sword, by Ian Serraillier. Joseph Balicki, a Polish teacher, and recently escaped German prisoner has found himself in the rubble of his old family home. From an old family friend, he learns that the night he was taken away to the Nazi camp, his wife, Margrit and his children were separated. Later Margrit was taken to a labor camp in Germany, but was unable to be traced. Nobody has any clue as to where his children are. Joseph walks around the remains of his old home, looking for clues to where his family could be. Suddenly, he comes across a silver sword, his wife’s birthday present. When he meets a young pickpocket called Jan and tells the boy to look out for his children, who would think that the little boy would be the key to finding his family once again? Joseph decides to go to Switzerland, the Balicki’s meeting point, if, for some reason they were separated. He knows that his children and wife know where to go if something like that happened. Will they be able to find each other?

I loved this book for many reasons. The Silver Sword is a really deep, thoughtful book, and it really makes you care so much about the characters. For example, Bronia, the sister of Ruth and Edek, really caught my sympathy. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to be so young, to be five years old, and have your mother and father taken away and being forced to learn to survive with just your siblings. When I first started reading this story, I literally could not put the book down. As a realistic fiction novel, the story and feelings of the characters felt so real.

This book is also set in World War II, which was a time that I find really interesting. The story begins at the Nazi camp of Zakyna, where Joseph Balicki was imprisoned. The camp was crowded with prisoners…. Each hut held about 120 - yet it was hardly big enough for more than forty…. For drinking they had warm water with bread crumbs in it - the Nazi guards called it coffee. There isn’t much detail, but every small sentence that described the conditions of the war camp brought me further and further into Joseph’s world. Though the characters are all fictional, the author wrote The Silver Sword so well it seems as though all the events could have actually happened. 

I would rate this story a 10/10. I think all children and adults from ten years old and up would all love this novel. It is a wonderful story, and I hope that reading my review has convinced you to go start reading The Silver Sword, by Ian Serraillier!

Puffin Books, 159 pages