Review: "White Eagles" by Elizabeth Wein

White Eagles by Elizabeth Wein
Published 2019 via Barrington Stoke
★★★

In White Eagles, Wein turns her love of flying and stellar research skills to 1939 Poland, where war is on the doorstep. Kristina and her twin are both pilots, but it's Kristina who ends up flying across Europe with a stowaway in tow, trying to stay one step ahead of...well, just about everyone around them.

White Eagles is a hi-lo book—complex themes but simple language, suitable for teenagers who struggle with reading but want something up to their emotional level. I've read a handful of hi-lo books but only recently realized that Wein has written a few. I'm rating this largely in comparison to her other books, but even limited to a hundred or so pages and simpler language, she tells a killer story. I love, too, that she's doing something new here: I think she could have gotten away with pulling side characters from her other books and writing short novels about them, or even streamlining and simplifying some of her earlier books, but instead White Eagles is a whole new setting and grim set of truths. I moved on from this to Firebird, and I just have to hope that Wein will eventually let fly with a longer book set in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. In the meantime, these have been an unexpected pleasure to find.