1944 Belfast. Fraulein Berg arrives to teach German at Kate, Harriet and Sally's school. Saturated with war-time propaganda, reading spy stories and imagining themselves dropping over enemy lines to perform daring and heroic deeds, the girls decide that, as she's German, she must be the enemy - and she must be a spy. They set to work to prove it, following her everywhere, recording everything in notebooks, hounding her, seeing themselves as valiant secret service agents helping their country. Finally on a train travelling between Dublin and Belfast, they alert a border guard ... The story is told by Kate years later, always haunted by their silly antics at the time, and often wondering what happened, in the end, to the unhappy Fraulein Berg. In fact, she was a Jewish escapee from Nazi Germany, having lost parents, two sisters and a brother in the gaschambers. Kate reflects that, so used to dividing people up into Protestants and Catholics, enemies and friends, they had never stopped to think of the tragedy they might be creating..First published in 1980 by Julia MacRae Books

 

 

This book features in the following series: New Windmills Series, Red Fox Fiction, Red Fox Fiction Older Children, Signature Series .

There are 160 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2000 by Hodder & Stoughton Childrens Division .

Joan Lingard was born in Edinburgh but grew up in Belfast. She has had a long and varied career in children's books, and was awarded the M. B. E, in 1998 for services to children's literature. She writes with equal success for teenagers, adults and the very young.