Parents' Guide to The Windeby Puzzle

Parents need to know that The Windeby Puzzle is Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry's (Number the Stars, The Giver) imaginative evocation of two teens who may have lived in the Iron Age before meeting an untimely death -- as evidenced by a well-preserved body from the first century A.D., found in 1952 in a German peat bog. There's a lot of factual information about ancient bodies preserved in peat bogs, and what we can learn from studying them. In this case, the author takes a deep dive into what's known about the person who came to be known as the Windeby Child, which isn't much. She draws heavily on the Roman historian Tacitus and what he had to say about the Germanic tribes of his day. And from such fragments weaves short, dramatic narratives about two different characters, trying to bring to life young people and what might have brought them to death in a bog, long before their time. Doomed as the characters are from the outset, the narrative is often horrifically violent, as sacrificial lambs cry for their mothers before their throats are slashed, a terrified young girl is dragged to death by drowning, and flickers of hope and joy exist mainly to be dashed. Warriors engage in ugly, puking drunken revelry as part of village celebrations, and tribal bands regularly fight and enslave one another. As an exercise in the writer's craft and a look at archeology, it's a fascinating study. As a story, it may be too dark, bleak, and violent for sensitive readers, despite Jonathan Stroh's gorgeous illustrations of Estrid, Varick, an old owl, and the marshy landscape they live in.