Title: Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Type of Media: Audio CD
Publisher: Bolinda Audio
Copyright Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1486213931
Genre: Historical Fiction
Curriculum Ties: World War II, Holocaust, Spies
Reading Level: Lexile 1020
Interest Age: 14+
Plot Summary
Verity is being transported by her best friend into occupied Germany when their plane crashes. She is arrested by the Gestapo who learn that she is an enemy spy. They then spend months trying to get all of the information possible extracted from her. She is starved and beaten, so close to death but determined to survive she begins to write this story giving you all of the information on who she is and about her relationship with the pilot. Will Verity survive this ordeal or after he full confession will she be executed anyway?
Critical Evaluation
This novel is a great telling of what it meant for someone to be a prisoner of war during the Nazi's reign. The narrator of this audiobook does a fantastic job with infliction and voices which adds to the realness of this historical fiction piece of work. With a Lexile score of 1020, the language in this novel is more difficult than some will be able to read and I found that the audiobook was not only fun but also helped with this limitation.
Wein does a great job masterminding the journey of two best friends who find themselves in an unbelievable situation, she paints a vision of strong women who lent their services to the Allied Forces during the war. With a secretive plot in mind you will enjoy the weaving of characters that Wein created.
Reader's Annotation
Get lost in a world of darkness as you read Verity's words of who she is and how she got to be a POW in WWII. Don't miss out on the narrator either, give the audio a try!
Author Biography
I was born in New York City in 1964, and moved to England when I was 3. I started school there. We lived practically in the shadow of Alderley Edge, the setting for several of Alan Garner's books and for my own first book The Winter Prince; that landscape, and Garner's books, have been a lifelong influence on me.My father, who worked for the New York City Board of Education for most of his life, was sent to England to do teacher training at what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. He helped organize the Headstart program there. When I was six he was sent to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica for three years to do the same thing in Kingston. I loved Jamaica and became fluent in Jamaican patois (I can't really speak it any more, but I can still understand it); but in 1973 my parents separated, and we ended up back in the USA living with my mother in Harrisburg, PA, where her parents were. When she died in a car accident in 1978, her wonderful parents took us in and raised us.
I went to Yale University, spent a work-study year back in England, and then spent seven years getting a PhD in Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. While I was there I learned to ring church bells in the English style known as "change ringing", and in 1991 I met my future husband there at a bell ringers' dinner-dance. He is English, and in 1995 I moved to England with him, and then to Scotland in 2000.We share another unusual interest--flying in small planes. My husband got his private pilot's license in 1993 and I got mine ten years later. Together we have flown in the States from Kalamazoo to New Hampshire; in Kenya we've flown from Nairobi to Malindi, on the coast, and also all over southern England. Alone, most of my flying has been in eastern Scotland.
Wein, E. (n.d.). Elizabeth E. Wein. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-E.-Wein/e/B000APFEQ0/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Book Talk Ideas
- Espionage
- Prisoner of War Treatment
- Violence
Defense File
Reason for Inclusion
This is historical fiction book that should be required reading for all high school students as it beings WWII to life from a women spy's prospective. It is a Printz Award Honor book, Amazon Best Teen Book of the month, and was Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
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