In the spring of 1989, Noah Keller’s parents uproot him suddenly and dramatically for a move to East Berlin, where his mom has finally been approved to do research on the East German education system. In their new life Noah must follows rules about when and where he can speak openly (never in their apartment). His parents, though, are still his parents, making things a little less unsettling. Noah is not allowed to attend school for months, in part because of his stutter. His friendship with Claudia (Cloud), the girl who lives downstairs, is his salvation. Claudia is creative, unusual, and as lonely as Noah, stuck with her grandmother while her parents are on vacation. When Claudia learns her parents have died in a car accident, she spins an elaborate fantasy to deal with her grief. But it becomes clear to the reader, and eventually Noah, that her parents may, in fact, have escaped East Germany without her. Noah also begins to suspect, correctly, that his mother is a spy. Wonderful storytelling propels a novel in which each chapter ends with a “Secret File” providing factual information that gives historical context to events (e.g., how Germany was divided, the wall, life under communism). Noah and Claudia are heart and soul of this fascinating look at the extraordinary weeks and months leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Ages 10–13)

Slip behind the Iron Curtain into a world of smoke, secrets, and lies in this stunning novel where someone is always listening and nothing is as it seems.

Noah Keller has a pretty normal life, until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn’t really Noah and he didn’t really just turn eleven in March. And he can’t even ask them why — not because of his Astonishing Stutter, but because asking questions is against the newly instated rules. (Rule Number Two: Don’t talk about serious things indoors, because Rule Number One: They will always be listening). As Noah—now “Jonah Brown”—and his parents head behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, the rules and secrets begin to pile up so quickly that he can hardly keep track of the questions bubbling up inside him: Who, exactly, is listening — and why? When did his mother become fluent in so many languages? And what really happened to the parents of his only friend, Cloud-Claudia, the lonely girl who lives downstairs? In an intricately plotted novel full of espionage and intrigue, friendship and family, Anne Nesbet cracks history wide open and gets right to the heart of what it feels like to be an outsider in a world that’s impossible to understand.