The Impossible Legacy: Identity and Purpose in Autobiographical Children's Literature Set in Third Reich and Second World WarThe Impossible Legacy promises its readers survey of autobiographical and children's literature about Third Reich, its role in World War II, and its contemporary heritage. A scholarly study would continue earlier work of Mary Cadogan (Women and Children First, 1978), Christa Kamenetsky (Children's Literature in Hitler's Germany, 1984), Ann Stalcup (On Home Front, 1998), and Jack Zipes (Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days, 1989). Thus, The Impossible Legacy could enlighten reader about contemporary children's literature and its link past. Instead, Gillian Lathey's presentation leaves her reader with feeling of frustration, anger, and disheartenment.Lathey proposes discuss children's literature by authors who have created German and language autobiographical (p. 18). That conversation is flawed by her inaccurate and misleading establishment of perimeters for her analysis. Format design, literary definitions, and interpretative discussions also weaken Lathey's book. Altogether, book lacks careful editing. For instance, bibliographic citation format is not consistent throughout, and book does not have an index that allows reader cross-reference Lathey's varied discussions of one author or title throughout her book. In addition, Lathey randomly uses theory from some well-known continental literary scholars while totally ignoring theorists who have studied Holocaust literature and literature of Third Reich. Jacques LaCann, Jacqueline Rose, and John Stephens are used establish reading practices, but works by Alan L. Berger, Lawrence Langer, and Sem Dresden are ignored. Cadogan and Kamenetsky are referenced, but Zipes and Stalcup are not.From beginning, Lathey expresses her personal disappointment in contemporary attitudes about and their responsibilities for war. She claims that authors and publishers have been largely interested in creating youthful stories of citizens as people who were involved in a just war...fought against an evil enemy (p. 17). children's literature about war, she argues, largely deals with collective guilt of people. Because Lathey is most interested in the differentiation of experience and paradoxes of denial, shame and personal trauma...matched by evidence of residual mistrust of Germans (p. 17), she begins by limiting her discussion those [texts] published between 1970 and 1995 (p. 31). However, she writes, More detailed reference is occasionally made texts which fall outside this period in interests of tracing development, notably Hans-Peter Richter's seminal autobiographical novel Damals war es Friedrich (1961, published in translation as Friedrich, 1970) (p. 31). Thus, her timeline does not restrict her inquiry of earlier publications. Further, Lathey has said she will use only English language titles...which have been published in UK and examine books that are British and accounts (p. 17). However, she notes that she will use children's and adolescent literature by writers who were first published in USA (p. 31) and who now live in United States. Her explorations of Jewish writing fall outside her earlier established geographic boundaries. Thus Lathey sets Jews inside her boundaries and causes their autobiography be viewed as universal or the other tale.Lathey attempts place texts by Jews who write about Jewish experience during World War II in category of narrative therapy (pp. 47-87) and downplay importance of these stories as historical memory. She maintains that these authors are trying to re-establish contact with childhood self (p. 19), and she argues,For Jewish writers who suffered enforced exile and necessary adoption of second language, linguistic did indeed become dispossession of one's self in forging of new identity, process which, as we shall see, had lasting consequences. …