book cover

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

by Judith Kerr

Published by HarperCollins Children's Books, 2008

  • Classics
  • Historical

About this book

Partly autobiographical, this is first of the internationally acclaimed trilogy by Judith Kerr telling the unforgettable story of a Jewish family fleeing from Germany at the start of World War II.

Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in Germany any longer. Suppose you found, to your complete surprise, that your own father was one of those people. That is what happened to Anna in 1933. She was nine-years-old when it began, too busy with her schoolwork and toboganning to take much notice of political posters, but out of them glared the face of Adolf Hitler, the man who would soon change the whole of Europe - starting with her own small life.

Anna suddenly finds things moving too fast for her to understand. One day, her father goes unaccountably missing. Then she herself and her brother Max are being rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they know - home and schoolmates and well-loved toys - right out of Germany!

About the author

Judith Kerr was born on 14 June 1923 in Berlin but escaped from Hitler's Germany with her parents and brother in 1933 when she was nine years old. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936.

Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1945. Since then, she has worked as an artist, a BBC television scriptwriter and, for many decades now, as author and illustrator of children's books.

Judith has a daughter who is a designer and a son who is a novelist. She lives in London.

Judith won our Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

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