Gleitzman’s final chapter in Holocaust series

SETTING a novel for children around World War II and the Holocaust may seem surprising, yet author Morris Gleitzman has found it a winning formula, with his series of books about a 10-year-old boy living in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II being widely read.

It started with Once, which sold more than 100,000 copies in Australia after its release in 2006, and was followed by Then, Now and finally After, which has just hit the bookshops.

The central character is Felix, who escapes from a Catholic orphanage where he has been hidden from the Nazis because he wants to search for his missing Jewish parents. His adventures become an engrossing journey of discovery.

Felix is 10 in Once and Then, but in Now it jumps to present-day Australia from the perspective of Felix as a grandfather facing new struggles, while After returns to the war to continue Felix’s ­adventures.

“The series has been hugely satisfying for me,” Gleitzman told The AJN. “When I told my publisher Penguin what I was planning to write, there was an awareness that this would not be an easy subject matter to write about for kids.

“Penguin did not see it as a hugely commercial proposition, but they were very supportive. And they have been pleasantly surprised.

“My desire was to build the whole story around a significant friendship, and I wanted to explore friendship in the context of tragedy as I was exploring the darker aspects.”

Gleitzman admits that he uses a lot of humour in most of his books, including in this Holocaust series.

“You have to be careful with humour – if it’s handled wrongly you can get terrible results. There is a type of humour that trivialises and deals in stereotypes, and while that can be a lot of fun in certain contexts, it wasn’t the type of humour that I would dream of using in these stories.

“However, the humour was a reminder of the life force that counters the forces of destruction and the darker side of the story.”

Gleitzman says he felt it was important to tackle the subject of the Holocaust with respect and spent several years researching the subject.

“The books are not trying to diminish or shy away from the severity of that time and place,” he says. “It is tempting when we look at what went on to despair about humanity. I did not want that to be the outcome of the story for young readers.

“I was trying to explore the best of what we are capable of as a species as well as the worst.”

In a note to readers at the end of After, Gleitzman writes: “This story is my imagination trying to grasp the unimaginable”.

Gleitzman says he has visited Holocaust museums in Melbourne and Sydney to talk to guides and groups of students about his books.

While working on the book, Gleitzman researched his own family history – one of his grandfathers was a Polish Jew from Krakow who left for London in the early 1900s. He married a Jewish woman, but she became ill and died, and he then married a non-Jewish woman. Gleitzman’s father was one of the children from the second marriage.

Gleitzman was born in England in 1953 and grew up in London. When he was 16 his family emigrated to Australia. At 17 he left school to work in a clothing factory, but after taking a writing course he landed a job with ABC-TV’s promotions department and worked on The Norman Gunston Show.

On weekends he wrote some script ideas for the comedy show and when the show’s writer left, he was offered the job.

The Norman Gunston Show became one of the most popular shows on Australian TV, so after it finished he found success as a freelance TV comedy writer.

One of his jobs was to write the screenplay for The Other Facts of Life, a story about an 11-year-old boy called Ben. While it was being filmed, the publisher asked him to turn the screenplay into a novel and in 1985 it became his first book.

Gleitzman decided he wanted to write novels, and by the time he had published his fourth book, he realised that sales and royalties were sufficient to support his family as a full-time writer.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” he says. “Apart from a few student jobs, writing has been my full-time job. As an author, you need to sell a lot of books to pay the bills. Most authors end up working part time.

“I am very fortunate that my books are widely read in the UK and are also published in quite a few languages. While it is rare that foreign-language books make much money, every little bit helps.”

Gleitzman has written almost 30 novels for children including Two Weeks with the Queen (1989), Worry Warts (1991), Blabber Mouth (1992), Misery Guts (1993), Bumface (1999) and last year’s Too Small To Fail and Pizza Cake.

After is published by Penguin Books.  $19.99 (rrp).

REPORT by Danny Gocs

PHOTO of Morris Gleitzman