After more than two dozen middle grade and picture books, Sara Pennypacker has written her first work of historical fiction for children. Set in occupied France in the final months of WWII, The Lions’ Run focuses on 13-year-old orphaned Lucas, who is ashamed of being ridiculed for his soft-heartedness and wants to overcome what he considers his cowardice. The book incorporates the under-reported story of the Lebensborn, covert residences established by the Nazis to house and care for girls pregnant with Nazi soldiers’ babies, into Lucas’s narrative. Pennypacker spoke with PW about children and courage, who suffers the most from war, and the importance of provoking questions in books.
Why did you decide to write historical fiction for kids, and what were the roots of this book?
I did write a historical fiction novel for adults. My Enemy’s Cradle, about the Lebensborn, was published under my maiden name, Sara Young, in 2008. When I learned about the Lebensborn, many years ago, I had a hard time believing this could be true. When I was able to confirm it, I was deeply appalled and knew I had to write about it. And I felt a book about this subject could only be for adults.
After I wrote that book, though, the strong feelings I had about the Lebensborn never left me. Even back then, I felt girls should know about this terrible aspect of that war. After all, some of those forced to bear the Nazis’ babies were as young as 15. The babies were taken away soon after birth and given to Nazi families to raise, with the goal of increasing Hitler’s ideal Aryan population. But I couldn’t figure out how to write about it appropriately for a young audience. It wasn’t until I learned, later, that children as young as 11 were working as couriers for the Resistance that the first seed for The Lions’ Run was planted. I began to wonder if those 11-year-olds were aware of how courageous they were. I think a lot about courage in kids; they are often confused about what it means to be brave.
How did you go about researching this story?
I first had to decide where to set the book. The Nazis had numerous Lebensborn in Germany, Austria, and Norway but there was only one in France, in the northwestern town of Lamorlaye, bordering the Chantilly Forest. It’s said that Hitler didn’t want to have any in France because many of the French weren’t as Aryan-looking as he wanted, but by 1943 he permitted one there, as long as it was near the north and near the German border. My sister, Elizabeth Young, has lived in France for a long time; she is fluent in French and is a great researcher. I wanted to utilize her, so I set my novel in Lamorlaye. She did all the groundwork in advance so I could spend two weeks there doing my own research.
Once I started studying that area, I discovered it was also a center for horse breeding. For generations there was a community of British thoroughbred trainers working in Chantilly. The 18th-century stables of Chantilly are very well known. I was walking through the forest behind the Lebensborn when I came across the racetrack where the horses trained. It’s 2.5 miles long, very wide, and runs between the Chantilly castle and the building that housed the Lebensborn. There was a horseback rider on the track and I asked him if this was the Lions’ Run. He confirmed that it was. Currently it’s a training track for about 1,200 horses.
Discovering the importance of the racehorses at Chantilly gave me another idea for my novel. While all the characters in the book are fictional, there are a couple that represent figures from that era. The character of Alice, a teenage British girl who wants to be a horse trainer and is hiding her horse from the Nazis, represents that community of British thoroughbred trainers. Many were able to get out of France when the war started, but some had to stay and watch the horses be stolen from their owners. Of course, in France these trainers were all men, so Alice would have been denied the opportunity to be a trainer—unless she took her horse to America, which is her plan. I enjoyed creating the scenes where Lucas and Alice talk about America as a land of opportunity, where people can be whatever they want—where a girl could be a horse trainer—and question if this could be true. I liked being able to write in my book, at this time in our history, that my country has always been regarded as a beacon for others.
Then I created Father Gustave, the abbey’s priest who is hiding Jewish children, in honor of one of Louis Malle’s films, Au Revoir Les Enfants. In this film, a priest is hiding some Jewish boys in his abbey school. Louis Malle was actually a boy in a French classroom when the Gestapo discovered and arrested Jewish boys who were in hiding there. I understood that many priests throughout France did the same thing, so it felt right to portray Father Gustave as a hero.
Your books about Pax are also set during wartime, but no actual war is referenced. For you, is there a relationship between those books and The Lions’ Run?
Yes, there is. These books are linked by their epigraphs. The epigraph in The Lions’ Run is an African proverb: “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,” meaning that those suffering the most from war are those who have nothing to do with it. In Pax, it is: “Just because it isn’t happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.” I took great care to veil the time and setting in Pax, because it felt important to me that readers not be able to comfort themselves that the events in it occurred in some other place or era. The epigraph speaks to that, urging readers not to be complacent just because they themselves aren’t experiencing the same things. Both The Lions’ Run and Pax are about the suffering war imposes on children and animals.
When I was on tour for Pax, talking with kids about the book, I learned how passionate they are about justice. They always wanted to talk about what they could do about animals being abandoned, so I had to be ready with answers. I told them about agencies in Syria at that time that were feeding abandoned pets. I researched organizations in their communities they could work with. I wanted to show them they could have agency in small ways. I talked about the theory of termites that is so important in The Lions’ Run: whenever the boys in the abbey’s orphanage misbehave in small ways, Sister Marie-Agnes says, “Little termites taking tiny bites can bring down a cathedral.” I wanted to let kids know that courage is not flashy bravery. It’s often just showing up.
There are many novels for children set during World War II. What drew you to writing another book about this era, and what do you hope readers take away from this story?
I get ideas for books all the time; not many of them are worthy of becoming a novel. I think of these ideas as seeds. Seeds need the right soil and environment to grow well. I’m the soil—my skills and interests at the time, what’s going on in my life. The environment is what’s going on in the world around me, and around my readers. Once I’ve narrowed the ideas down to a few that seem to be suited to the current soil and environment, I have to choose which one to commit my time and energy to. I have three rules for that. First, it has to have intrigued me for at least one month. Second, I have to be able to address some injustice in the novel—that’s the juice I need to power me for the two years or more that it can take to research and write the book. And third, I have to have imagined characters so real and dear to me that I’d feel the urge to jump in front of a bus to save them.
After a reader has finished this book, I want them to be filled with questions like: Is it ever okay to commit a crime to correct a crime? What is courage? What kind of bravery could I summon up if needed? I want them to ask these questions and to want to discuss them with others. My books have been translated into many languages, often in countries that are at war with each other. For example, Pax has been translated into both Russian and Ukrainian. I’m pleased that kids in countries that are at war can be linked by reading my books, and other children’s books, and asking the questions the books pose. The job of books is to open up questions. Good books provoke questions and don’t answer them.
The Lions’ Run by Sara Pennypacker, illus. by Jon Klassen. Macmillan/Balzer + Bray, $18.99 Feb. 3 ISBN 978-1-250-39281-7
