No Hero for the Kaiser [Library Binding]

Rudolf Frank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1986 | Age Level: 11 and up

Jan, a fourteen-year-old Polish boy whose town is invaded in World War I, joins a German battalion and experiences the horrors of battle.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-9 Fourteen-year-old Jan Kubitsky, the only survivor after the Russian and German troops raze his small Polish town in September 1914, is adopted as a mascot by the German unit. Although his own father is fighting for the Russians, Jan soon feels loyalty and affection for his German friends, and again and again he manages to save them so that they begin to see him as an almost superhuman, saint-like figure. Jan is witness to all of the horrors of war as he travels with the battery to both fronts. When the men conceive a plan to reward Jan by making him a German citizen, the idea is eagerly seized upon as good publicity by the high command. Jan, however, does not wish to be a symbol for the German army, and he quietly disappears. Frank's novel, originally published in 1931, banned by the Nazis and reissued in Germany in 1979, is an antiwar novel. Unfortunately it is so pointedly a didactic work that the story is subordinate to the message. Almost every chapter is introduced by a two-to-three page essay on the absurdity, inhumanity, or futility of war. Jan becomes less a character than a symbol as the story progresses. However Frank is eloquent and acerbic in his condemnation of war, and he has created some memorable characters and scenes (aided by a superb translation). However, there is no dearth of antiwar novels. Older readers would probably find Joseph Heller's Catch Twenty-Two (S. & S., 1961) more relevant, while for a broad range of younger readers, William O. Steele's The War Party (HBJ, 1978) succinctly delivers the antiwar message. Louise L. Sherman, Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, N.J.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation)

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 11 and up
  
• Library Binding: 222 pages
• Publisher: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, Div. of Wm. Morrow (May 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688060935
• ISBN-13: 978-0688060930
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,513,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars World War I book, December 9, 2011

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Melissa - See all my reviews

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This review is from: No Hero for the Kaiser (Hardcover)

We were studying World War I in school and I read this book to my students.
It was a great story that might have happened to a boy in Poland. It gave us a good
picture of what life must have been like when the Russians and Germans were fighting
over your piece of the world.