Age: 9+

Comedian Toksvig bases this serious book on her Danish father’s experience as a teenager. HitleAr’s Canary is about a family in Copenhagen under Nazi occupation, and the remarkable refusal of many Danes to allow Jewish compatriots to be taken away. The novel’s protagonist is young Bamse, whose family is gradually drawn into resistance activity — including the mass concealment and evacuation to safety of Jews as news spreads that they are about to be rounded up. Bamse, his brother and his Jewish friend take escalating risks, and Bamse’s mother, a celebrated actress, gives her finest performance when Germans search their flat where Jewish friends, including Thomas, her devoted gay dresser, are hidden behind a false wall. Thomas is one of the most haunting characters, and the story’s real hero. This is not a demonising book — there are good Germans, who look into boats full of Jewish refugees and report to fellow soldiers that there is, “No one here.” There are also Danes who betray their countrymen. This suspenseful, humane story illuminates the important fact given at the end: that collective moral outrage saved 8,000 people.

(Doubleday £8.99)

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