A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen

One morning in early 1960s Germany, Greta wakes up to find an impenetrable wall has been erected overnight dividing her city in two. This is devastating news because her father and brother had left a day earlier to look into getting work in West Germany. Now the family is divided.

A volunteer in our school library told me that she had visited the Berlin Wall when she was young. Visitors climbed up to viewing areas on the West German side to peer over at East Germany. She described it as existing in a full color world looking down at a monochromatic world.

This suspenseful story gives you a sense of what it was like to live in East Germany after the wall was erected during the Cold War. Lack of privacy, lack of food,  lack of work and lack of free will made many desperate people attempt a dangerous escape to the other side. Will Greta decide it's worth it to risk her life to try to escape as well?

Clear your calendar because you or your fifth grade and older reader won't be able to put this book down once it's started. A Night Divided is a highly recommended historical fiction novel about a very real part of recent world history.

Jennifer Nielsen is the author of the extremely popular Ascendance trilogy. This is her first historical fiction novel. Check her out on Twitter at @nielsenwriter.