Book Cover Photo Source, Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Greatest-Skating-Race/Louise-Borden/e/9780689845024/?itm=1, accessed May 6, 2009.
Bibliography
Borden, Louise. 2004. THE GREATEST SKATING RACE: A WORLD WAR II STORY FROM THE NETHERLANDS. Ill. by Niki Daly. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books.
Summary
This story takes place in December 1941, in the Netherlands during WWII. Piet, who's father and grandfather are skate makers by trade, wants more than anything else to be able to skate someday in the famous skating race, the Elfstedentocht or Eleven Towns Race. The race was held only in winters that were very cold because the canals and waterways that connect the towns had to be frozen.
December of 1941 was the second winter that the War had been in Holland. The country had been held by German soldiers for more than a year and Piet's father is in England serving with the Allied armies. That Christmas there are few presents for anyone, but Piet does get a small red leather notebook that he uses to write down all of the towns that are in the famous Elfstedentocht and how many kilometers are between each one. One night in January, one of their neighbors is taken away by the Greman soldiers because he owns a radio and has sent messages to England. The neighbor's wife fears for the safety of her children so she decides to send them to Brugge to live with their Belgian aunt. The problem is how to get them there without any German soldiers noticing. It is decided that Piet will skate them across the border on the canal that connected Slius with Brugge. Piet's grandfather tells him he must be as brave as his father and get the two children there before the sun sets. Piet worries that the little boy, who is only seven, will grow too tired to make it all the way there or that they will be stopped by German soldiers along the way.
The children do make it to their destination despite being stopped by German soldiers at the border. The book, although quite long, is a great history lesson in itself. I do think it is for older children, fourth grade and up. It gets a little sluggish in places but is interesting for the most part. The pictures, done by Niki Daly, are wonderfully coupled with the text. The children's flushed cheeks and the clothing they wear give an authenticity to the story as a whole.
Note: The Greatest Race was a 2007-2008 Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee.
Reviews
KIRKUS REVIEWS: "One winter day in 1941, in a German-occupied Dutch town called Sluis, ten-year-old Piet Janssen's ice-skating skills are put to a dangerous test. It's WWII, and Piet's schoolmate Johanna Winkelman's father has been arrested for espionage. Since his friend and her brother are no longer safe at home, Piet must help them escape to their aunt's house in Brugge, skating over icy canals and outsmarting German soldiers until the three cross the Belgian border. The story of this perilous, bitterly cold flight-a race against time-is told in Piet's earnest first-person voice and formatted like poetry, with frequent, often inexplicable line breaks. Themes of bravery, strength, and tradition echo throughout-like the "Swisssshh, swissshhh" of the children's skates. Daly's lovely illustrations, complete with rosy-cheeked innocents and autumnal tones, effectively evoke a sense of time and place in this slow-moving (but nonetheless moving) tale of a child's wartime heroism. (information about the Elfstedentocht, author's note on the history of skating, map) (Picture book. 8-11)
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: "A fictionalized story set in World War II is well served in Louise Borden's first-person narrative combined with Niki Daly's subdued and wintry palette of the Dutch landscape. A young skater named Piet has always admired the first man to skate the route now immortalized in the "Eleven Towns Race" that takes place in the Netherlands. He suddenly has a chance to use his skating skills to accompany two children whose father has been taken by the Germans. Their mother is sending them to relatives for safety and has asked him to skate the canals with them from Sluis (rhymes with voice) across the Belgian border to relatives. The dramatic story shows Piet's courage, his ability to avoid detection, and the ways the children keep up their spirits on the long skate (the record for the 200 kilometer race is slightly under thirteen hours). Although there is no suggestion that Piet's accomplishment is based on a real event, it reads like one complete with an "After the War" section and readers would have been well-served by a note saying exactly what is real and what is made up. There are, however, informative short historical notes, both on the race itself, and on skates and skate making, which end the story."
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