He gets everywhere, that bloke

And following on in very similar fashion in terms of category, genre (sort of), and relevance to work was the next one. I hadn't planned this to be the next, having a stack of books (actually and virtually) to work through to take me most of the way to the end of the year, but with a library recall and only two days to finish it, needs must. And while I don't know a vast amount about the French Revolution, I can't seem to escape the moustachioed former dictator of Germany at work and sometimes that can get you down. After all, there's only so many days of reading about eugenics or Nazi war atrocities that a man can deal with before going slightly mad.

Fortunately, although the run-up World War II is the setting for Judith Kerr's children's classic When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, it's not really set in the Third Reich and those nasty Nazis don't really feature. Which given it's about a family of Jewish emigrants in Switzerland, France and ultimately Britain makes sense when you think about it. The rise of the Nazis is constantly in the background and moments of anti-Semitism rear their ugly head at times, but this is largely a book concerned with childhood and growing up.

It's not a coming of age tale as such, young Anna is a bit young for that really, but it's a story of adapting, changing and forging an identity in foreign settings. All of which are beautifully conveyed through deceptively simple prose and a real feeling for what life must have been like. The sheltered element to the tale and the maintenance of innocence in spite of the very real dangers lends it a degree of fragile beauty and it's a finely constructed book, with largely as happy an ending as is possible given the circumstances. That it's very strongly based on true events makes it all the more powerful and I've since done a bit of reading around the story and can see how fine some of the margins were. If I did read this as a child, I can't remember it, but I certainly wish I had – it's a classic for a reason and something deserving of being read by as wide an audience as possible.

Book number: 77
Title: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
Author: Judith Kerr
Category: Books with colours in the title