Sara Pennypacker’s The Lions’ Run (Hodder Children’s Books 288pp £14.99) is set in Occupied France, where the horrors of the Nazis and their Gestapo agents are omnipresent. A eugenics programme called Lebensborn arranges for women impregnated by German soldiers to give birth in a maternity centre before separating them from their children, who are sent to Germany. Orphaned Lucas, who lives in a nearby monastery and delivers goods around the village, is seeking a mother himself. When he meets one of the women from the maternity centre he is drawn to her, little knowing that this connection will thrust him into a dangerous conflict with the occupiers.

The novel’s central theme is family, its rupture and its coming together. In the opening chapters, Lucas, displaying a bravery that serves him well throughout, rescues some kittens from being drowned. He also finds friendship in the form of Alice, a rich English girl who has stayed behind to look after her father’s horses, and who stables her favourite mount in secret so that the Nazis can’t steal it.

These small acts of tenderness highlight the brutality around them. Both horse and baby are fated to be separated from those who love them; meanwhile, hanging