Sunday's Child

Serena Katts grandfather, whom she knew as Opa, was a Sundays Child, one of the lucky ones for whom everything always went right. Opa left a brief account of his childhood and teenage years, but it is opaque, a story of prizes won and boyish adventures. In Sundays Child, Serena Katt interrogates Opas version of his life. Was it really so innocent? Did he really not know what the Nazis were doing? He joined the Hitler Youth at the age of ten, swearing an oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer. From then on the games he played were actually military training, designed to produce a new German youth violent, domineering, unafraid, cruel which the world will fear. At seventeen, in the final desperate days of the war, he is called up but his luck holds. He is sent home and thus survives the war. Sundays Child marks the debut of a remarkable graphic novelist. Serena Katts book is powerful, eloquent and moving, and her drawing is superb.