Children and Fire by Ursula Hegi

"As they hunker and observe, they feel the learning seep into their bodies like breath, almost, or like a soul, a shape they can't describe but know is there, just as they know from their teacher that learning lives inside them with all they have learned before, ready to connect to more learning."
                                                    -from the novel, page 187

This book really was not what I expected. I thought it would involve the Holocaust and a Schindler-like character helping Jews to escape the Nazis. The setting is Burgdorf, Germany in 1934, a time soon after Hitler has come to power. Fraulein Thekla Jansen is the young and beloved teacher of a class of 10-year-old boys. Though she seems quite devoted to her students, she is taken in by the political propaganda of the time, even encouraging her boys to join the "Hitler-Jugend," something like a Nazi scout troop. The teacher-student relationship was interesting to me since I am a retired teacher of students almost the same age. (Though thankfully of a different time and place!) Some of Fraulein Jansen's educational philosophy was right on, in my opinion, such as the quote above having to do with making connections and also illustrated by a quote from page 196: "Her exhilaration at his progress is what she believes love is: to bring her students forward and to release them once they're ready."

Though I forced myself to continue reading (I am, after all the facilitator of our discussion group AND the selector of this novel!) I was glad I read it. I found it very wordy in places but quite poetic in others. For example, one sentence that I particularly noticed was 14 lines long, almost 70 words! And to illustrate the poetry, when the students are playing at recess and see their breaths melting ice they are reminded "of something Fraulein has told them: once a hole opens in how you've been looking at the world, everything else pushes through." I found that to be a lovely and profound thought.

It was rather interesting, too, that I was finishing this book a day after Ash Wednesday and there were several references to that religious observance. One of the students relates that the priests burn Palm Sunday branches and save the ashes for the next year's Ash Wednesday tradition of tracing crosses on parishioners' foreheads. If I ever knew that, I had forgotten it.

I look forward to hearing the discussion of this book. Perhaps I will like it more afterward; that has happened before. I will rate the book a 4 and I doubt I will look for others by this author. As I said, it was worthwhile, if only to show how bright people can be taken in by propaganda and fear.

Our group met to discuss Children and Fire on the last day of February. We had an excellent discussion and the group voted a 3.4 rating with all 4's and 3's. Refreshments furnished by two members were delicious: a sweet potato and apple hash and bee-sting cake which was mentioned by a German name in the novel. What a lovely treat!