The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

• Genre: Nonfiction; young adult biography
• Originally Published: 2015
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 970L; grades 8-12
• Structure/Length: 18 chapters plus introduction and epilogue; approx. 208 pages; approx. 4 hours, 51 minutes on audio
• Central Concern: This nonfiction biography narrates the experiences of 14-year-old Knud Pedersen, a Danish boy who, with his brother and friends, organizes resistance groups against the German occupation of their country in WWII.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Wartime violence; imprisonment and abuse; psychological trauma

Phillip Hoose, Author

• Bio: Born in 1947; raised in Indiana; attended Indiana University and the Yale School of Forestry; lives currently in Maine; writer of books for children and young adults; essayist, musician, songwriter, conservationist; earned the Maine Library Association’s Katahdin Award for lifetime achievement
• Other Works: We Were There, Too!: Young People in US History (2001); The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (2004); Perfect, Once Removed: When Baseball Was All the World to Me (2006); Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (2009)
• Awards: Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal (honor; 2016); Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor (2016)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Justified Disobedience in Wartime
• War and the Loss of Innocence
• The Psychological Power of Resistance
• The Trauma of World War II