WWII Tale for Middle-Schoolers

By Naperville Magazine
August 2026 View more Books

By Jeff Banowetz

Judson University professor Rob Currie didn’t have any plans on becoming a novelist.

His seventh-grade son came home one day with a two-page story he had written in study hall about the Netherlands, and Currie had an idea. “I thought: Let’s write a book together,” he says. “It won’t be for publication or anything, but it would be fun to do.”

After getting started, his son soon lost interest. But Currie really enjoyed the process. “My son gave up, as you’d expect from a seventh grader, but I was hooked.”

His first book, Hunger Winter, targeted at middle-school readers, was published in 2020, and followed 13-year-old Dirk, who works with the Dutch resistance after his father disappears during World War II. “My wife has Dutch ancestry, and my father fought in World War II, so it’s always been an area of interest to me,” Currie says. He’s followed that up with a sequel published this year, Time for Courage, in which Dirk becomes involved in protecting Jewish children from the Nazi occupiers.

The chair of the psychology department at Judson University in Elgin, Currie has enjoyed the research necessary to make this fictional tale as realistic as possible. He’s now at work on the third and final novel in the series.

Does his now-grown son regret giving up the writing project? “He’s actually very proud that he was the one who got this whole thing going.”

Photos: Rob Currie