I Am David

LoveReading4Kids Says

Anne Holm’s novel, first published in the UK in 1965, is one of the most honest and searing accounts for children of man’s inhumanity to man. It’s also one of the most hopeful.

It tells the haunting story of a 12-year-old boy who is helped to escape from a concentration camp in Eastern Europe by an otherwise hateful guard.

Convinced this is a trap to kill him, David nevertheless sets off by way of Greece, Italy, Switzerland and Germany in order to get to Denmark, where his former captor had told him he would find ultimate safety. His journey is full of incident, this is a tense and exciting story.

Brought up in the camp, David knows nothing of the outside world, but he knows who he is. No matter what happens, he has decided he will not give in to men who love violence and he won’t let them change him. Holm felt that children need ‘real, valuable literature’ and I Am David is a masterpiece.

Reviewed by Andrea Reece
Andrea Reece has spent almost her entire working life in children’s books, first as publisher, latterly as consultant, project manager and critic.
More reviews by Andrea Reece

About I Am David

In this gripping story, a twelve-year-old boy struggles to cope with an entirely strange world as he flees northward to freedom in Denmark, after escaping from the eastern European prison camp where he spent most of his life. David's entire twelve-year life has been spent in a grisly prison camp in Eastern Europe. He knows nothing of the outside world.

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