Words Matter: The Story of Hans and Sophie Scholl, and the White Rose Resistance
This fictionalized biography in verse for middle-grade readers narrates the story of siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, members of the White Rose Resistance that circulated leaflets about the truth of Hitler’s genocidal war. Pazner sets the stage with Hitler’s takeover of a Germany struggling through the Great Depression, preaching hatred against traditional scapegoats—Jews, Romani, LGBTQ people—and his own political enemies. Readers meet Hans and Sophie’s father, a freethinker who had to hold his tongue to keep his family safe. At first Hans and Sophie join the Hitler Youth, eager to help their fellow Germans. In a poignant spread, Pazner and illustrator Casson show 12-year-old Hans and his friends designing a fantasy creature to display under the Nazi flag, only to have their commander destroy it in the name of “Conformity above all else.”
Most of the story focuses on how the young Scholls become disillusioned with Nazi ideology, and how serving on the front lines opens Hans’s eyes to the propaganda the German people have been fed. Bad luck leads to their capture and execution, but Pazner ends on an inspiring note, with British planes dropping the leaflets that the White Rose members wrote and circulated. Words do matter, and this book offers young readers much to think about, particularly in a new era of autocracy, hatred, and violence against the vulnerable.
