Books

Peter, a boy of five, makes an extraordinary journey through war-torn Europe, travelling with his parents from a small Hungarian town, through Austria and on to Germany.
Along the way, unforgettable images of adventure flash one after another: sleeping in a tent and then under the night sky, discovering a disused brick factory, catching butterflies in the meadows, before
Peter realizes that the adventure is really a nightmare, as he watches bombs fall from the blue sky outside Vienna and starts lessons with his mother in Bergen-Belsen.
Drawn against a background of terror, starvation, and his father’s and grandmother’s deaths, this is a story of survival; of love between mother and son; and of enduring hope in the face of unspeakable hardship.

Click here to buy the Graphic Memoir of The Boy Who Didn’t Want To Die.

First published in January 2023 as a memoir for children, The Boy Who Didn’t Want to Die was widely acclaimed, selected as the Times Children’s Book of the Week, winning the UKLA Non-Fiction Prize and being shortlisted for Best Children’s Non-Fiction book at the British Book Awards.

This new illustrated edition, also published by Scholastic in 2025, brings Peter’s story to a new audience, with phenomenal illustrations from Victoria Stebleva.