Starred review from November 2, 2015
Like Life Is Beautiful and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, this deeply moving debut novel, set in Poland and Germany during WWII, casts naïveté against the cruel backdrop of inhumanity. Late one autumn morning, seven-year-old Anna is put under the care of a pharmacist. Her father is supposed to retrieve her in a few hours, but he never returns. Cast from her caretaker’s shop, Anna has nowhere to turn until she falls in with a reluctant stranger, a tall, reticent man. Thus begins a years-long journey through the woods and beyond that draws Anna closer and closer to the strange man, who communicates with birds and speaks in metaphors (“Everything he said—even, perhaps especially, the things he left out—seemed to carry the reliable weight of truth”). In his quiet yet firm manner, the Swallow Man teaches Anna lessons of survival, some of which challenge her instincts to be honest and compassionate. Savit’s economical prose beautifully captures a child’s loss of innocence and the spiritual challenges that emerge when a safe world suddenly becomes threatening. The subject matter and gritty imagery may be too intense for some younger readers, but those knowledgeable of wartime atrocities will recognize the profundity of the bond of trust built between two strangers who become increasingly dependent on each other. Ages 12–up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, Inkwell Management.

November 15, 2015
After a young girl is left to fend for herself in World War II Poland, she stumbles upon an intriguing gentleman who she hopes will guide her out of the emerging chaos of war. Anna Lania is 7 at the start of this multiyear tale with its overtones of folklore and magical realism. Her linguistics-professor father is taken away by the Germans during the expulsion of intellectuals at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. A linguist herself, Anna is drawn to the language abilities and bird savvy of the Swallow Man, so named to preserve his anonymity. As they make their way together across Poland, the Swallow Man has ingenious ways of explaining their new realities to Anna via storytelling while his real activities remain an enigma until the end. Most striking here is that debut author Savit creates a young girl's world that only consists of father figures--and it is not always clear how Anna is to determine whom to trust and whether or not these relationships and how she thinks of them are ultimately safe. The eventual conclusion: human connection, however brief or imperfect, has the potential to save us all. Artful, original, insightful. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

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December 1, 2015

Gr 8 Up-In 1939 Krakow, seven-year-old Anna realizes her linguist father is not coming back from a meeting of university professors who have been summoned by the Gestapo. She can speak many languages and converse with adults, and she's able to adapt to her surroundings as Anja, Khannaleh, Anke, or whichever persona she chooses. Her father's friend, Herr Doktor Fuchsmann, becomes fearful about hiding her, so she takes to the streets, following a tall man with a doctor's bag who talks to birds. The Swallow Man's name is never learned, but the pair wander the countryside together for four years, in a story that gradually becomes less plot-based and more allegorical. There is plenty of bird imagery, suggesting the Swallow Man might be a trickster, as he swoops, nests, and eats little but dried bread. Yet there are also hints he has run from some nefarious involvement in the war and no longer wants to be "an instrument of death." Spare dialogue and elegant prose are filled with subtleties, including the language Swallow Man and Anna agree to use to keep her safe, called the "Road." Though Anna is a child at the beginning, she ages over the course of this novel, which gets darker and more violent toward the end. When Reb Hirschl, a burly and friendly Jewish man they meet in the woods, is killed and an unscrupulous doctor asks Anna to strip in exchange for medicine, it is a loss of innocence the author compares to hatching from the egg so that she will fly on her own. VERDICT More interpretive than literal, the story will generate discussion among YA readers.-Vicki Reutter, State University of New York at Cortland

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2015
Grades 8-11 In 1939, seven-year-old Anna's father, a linguistics professor in Krakow, disappears, along with 150 other academics. Parentless, she must find an adult to care for her, and thanks to her precocious, quick thinking, she convinces a willowy, enigmatic stranger to let her travel with him. Savit lyrically and languidly narrates the following years as Anna and the stranger, whom she calls the Swallow Man, peripatetically wander the Polish countryside, keeping to themselves and subsisting on whatever they can forage. Before long, the dangers of the Nazi occupation and the atrocities of the Holocaust become impossible to ignore, and when they add a Jewish musician to their traveling band, the Swallow Man faces difficult questionshow far will he go to protect Anna? And how far will he go to protect his own identity? Full of sophisticated questions and advanced vocabulary, Savit's debut occasionally feels like an adult novel, but young readers with the patience for his gauzy pacing and oblique plot turns will be rewarded by a moving, thought-provoking story about coming-of-age in the midst of trauma.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

February 29, 2016
Anna is seven years old when the Nazis come for her linguistics professor father. In 1939 Poland, many children are left orphaned or are taken to concentration camps, but Anna finds refuge of a sort by traveling with a tall, thin man, who communicates with birds and speaks in metaphors. Anna and the Swallow Man speak in Polish, German, Russian, Yiddish, and French. Reader Corduner performs these lines with the lightest of accents, flavoring the story and never overwhelming the listener. Corduner’s gentle tone of voice makes young Anna come alive without resorting to high-pitched breathiness. His Swallow Man is mysterious but also comforting, setting up great tension in the story. In his quiet yet firm manner, the Swallow Man teaches Anna lessons of survival, some of which challenge her instincts to be honest and compassionate. Corduner handles the story deftly, simply letting Savit’s words do the work and never hamming it up in his performance. This book is more than simple historical fiction; it is almost a fable about how to live in hard times. Corduner’s performance is also more than simple narration—it is remarkable. Ages 12–up. A Knopf hardcover.

Starred review from January 1, 2016
In 1939 Krakow, Poland, seven-year-old Anna is left orphaned after her father, a linguistics professor, is taken by the Nazis. Confused and frightened, but pragmatic, she follows a mysterious man, tall and exceedingly thin whom she meets on the street and who seems to have the power to communicate with birdsout of the city and toward an unknown destination. As they walk, and as days become months, then years, the Swallow Man teaches Anna life lessons and survival skills in the form of aphorisms ( Asking a stranger for something is the easiest way to assure that he will not give it. Much better simply to show him a friend with a need ) and metaphors ( Those [soldiers] look like young men, don't they? But they're not. The ones from the westthose are wolves. And the ones from the east are bearsand if they can find a reason to hurt you, they will ). Then Anna finds a man in the woods, a Jewish man who is a musician and who joins their little familyfor a time. The third-person narrativelyrical, fluid, with a pervasive shadow of menacelends a folkloric feel to a graceful story steeped in history, magic, myth, and archetype; comparisons to The Book Thief (rev. 3/06) are apt regarding writing style, themes, and intended audience beyond the protagonist's years. The book leaves readers with many questions, not least of which are: Who is the Swallow Man? What is he? As the Swallow Man's words remind us in the epilogue: Questions, Annaquestions are far more valuable than answers. elissa gershowitz

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)