Off to a very troubling start
Max by Sarah Cohen-Scali, translated by Penny Hueston (MacMillan Children’s Publishing Group, $21.99).
French novelist Sarah Cohen-Scali goes as deep into Nazism as possible–starting in utero, as a child conceived as part of the Lebensborn program narrates the young adult novel Max.
Named Konrad–though the nickname Max sticks–and baptized by the Führer himself, the protagonist is a true believer from the first, so much so that’s it is uncomfortable for the informed reader, who knows just how these ideals and ideas ended up. But as he grows up and is further indoctrinated, Max finds nothing to discourage him from the rightness of the Reich–which would make this novel rather chilling propaganda for the neo-Nazis, except for the turn it takes when Max meets a blonde, blue-eyed Polish boy, Lukas, who has a secret. He’s a Jew.
The achingly slow evolution of Max’s moral center offers a new–and thoroughly squirmy–way to understand how reasonable people could do horrible and insane things. While it couldn’t be more timely, without context, older children and teens might not understand just how downright creepy Max is before his awakening. This would be a great addition to the reading list for youths who’ve already devoured such classics as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl or Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, but it probably shouldn’t be the first exposure to literature about the Holocaust and Nazism for young readers.

Told initially from the point of view of a fetus, this book was difficult to read. I was unable to complete the book.

See my review on The Hub:

http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2017/07/17/qp2018-5-world-war-ii-tales/

This was a very unique book for the Holocaust and World War II history that would definitely catch a teen's attention and keep the reading. While it was a bit predictable, it was definitely very different in how it presented all the situations.

I just couldn't get into this. I think the narrating baby is what I can't deal with--he's obnoxious and, in case you missed it, he's a baby. I don't understand babies when they can't talk, let alone this one that only talks about Hitler and breastfeeding. I'm sure it's good, as it won a ton of awards, but it was just too dry for me and really weird.

This is a very interesting historical fiction book set in Nazi Germany. The Lebensborn Program is going strong and women are selected by their Aryan features and linage, to reproduce. The babies are taken away from their mothers soon after birth and raised basically by the Nazi party, Max often says his mother is Germany and his father is the Fuhrer. You first meet Max before he is born, because he doesn't want to be born yet, it is only April 19th, he wants to be the first to be born on April 20th, so he and the Fuhrer can have the same birthday, he makes it. As Max grows older he becomes for the most part, the poster child for the Nazi party, but not everything goes exactly as planned. This book was a bit slow in the beginning but than it exploded as Max did with growth. The story and the historical information starts moving at warp speed and wow, what a book it is.

There was a point in <i>Max</i> where I didn't just want to put the book down, I wanted to throw it against the wall. The title character--an enthusiastic Nazi (from conception apparently) who claims that his father is the Führer and his mother is Germany--betrays a group of desperate Polish kids and turns them over to kidnappers.

Of course, this was also the point where I realized how deeply Sarah Cohen-Scali had gotten to me, with this character whose gestation (Max's narrative begins in utero), infancy and childhood are used to illustrate a lesser-known, but no-less-despicable Nazi program known as <i>Lebensborn</i>

The Lebensborn were dreamed up by chicken-farmer-turned-arch-villain Heinrich Himmler, who sought a breeding program to ensure a steady supply of blonde, blue-eyed Arians for the 1000-year Reich. Young people of both genders--women as young as 15 from the Bund Deutsches Mädchen, and strapping SS recruits--were teamed to produce children that would be given to the Führer. Max's mother, like all of his homelife, is complicated by the ideology that wishes to replace mother's milk with racism. There were almost a dozen of these Lebensborn homes in Gemany, as well as others in occupied Denmark and Norway, where blonde women were sequestered to produce "nordic" babies.

Cohen-Scali is able to move Max out of Munich to occupied Poland to show another element of the Lebensborn movement--the kidnapping of foreign children who matched the racial stereotypes that Himmler and his minions wanted. While so much of Max's 1st-person observations seem surreal, his time in Poland--what he witnesses and does there--would seem to make him irredeemable.

In the final third of the book, Max and a Lebensborn kidnap victim, Lucjen, illustrate another Nazi program for children: the better-known Napola academies for boys. In this boarding school for the elite, the confront even greater horrors than those of the Lebensborn and prepare to survive the Soviet encirclement of Berlin.

<i>Max</i> is a vivid illustration of a terrible time in history. Cohen-Scali isn't writing Max to be liked. She wants him to be illustrative--and he is. Oh, how he is.

Special thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review of the book.

I only wish that this book will become mandatory reading material for everyone. I have such high hopes for this title!!!

History is written by the victors but fiction usually represents their victims. Then there's Max. He is both and neither. A intriguing story of Nazi preconception indoctrination.

Hmmmm . . . I'm not really sure what to say about this book . . . . it's kind of like "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," if the German boy had a completely filthy mouth, was kind of an a-hole, and was literally born and bred to be a Nazi . . . . Soooooo in that case, I guess it's actually nothing like "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" . . . . I think ultimately what it boils down to is this - did I enjoy this book? I did. Was it hard to read at times? Absolutely. Is this for the faint of heart? No, not even a little bit. Is it a completely and utterly unique novel that will get you thinking? I'm going with a hard YES! This is definitely a challenging novel because of how honest a picture the author paints of not only the time period but of the effect it had on children as well. Adults and older teens may find themselves cringing at times, but the storytelling is so compelling it will keep you reading until the very end.

Disturbing in a magnificent way. Despite the dark subject matter, I found myself unable to put this down. Excellently researched. It is unfortunately easy to see the truth behind this fictional tale. I'll definitely be recommending this to some of my older teens.

This tale of a baby born indoctrinated into the 3rd Reich, progressing as he ages, is a starting and insightful look into why people were so devoted to Hitler. Max/Konrad's change of heart comes slowly but inexorably and this tale does not flinch from raw details of war and indignities suffered by so many. Not a happy read, but very thought-provoking.

Ok. No book talk on this one. According to my Kindle, I made it to 36% (finished chapter 13). I'm not even sure why I pushed that far. I just can't seem to care about this. Max is unsympathetic and just not relatable to me. Maybe some people love this, but I'm not one of them.