Else Ury's Nesthäkchen is a Berlin doctor's daughter, Annemarie Braun, a slim, golden blond, quintessential German girl.

[1] This third volume of the series, published 1915/1921, tells the story of ten-year-old Annemarie's bout of scarlet fever, her recovery in a North Sea children's sanitorium, and her desperate struggle to return home at the outbreak of World War I.

Another counterpoint to Peter (who is a replacement for Anne Marie's wild brother Klaus in this part of the novel) is Kurt, whom she already met in Berlin in the hospital.

[4] "The context of the surrounding social setting is fascinating—a snapshot of a vanished world presented with charming, black-and-white period illustrations.

Ury’s narrative tone is amusingly sardonic at times—affectionate but assessing, as it aims to appeal to both children and their parents.

Her portraits of the various adults that Annemarie encounters are refreshingly textured; they’re not the one-dimensional authority figures that were more typical of children’s books of the time.

The story also handles Annemarie’s shifting emotions, from feeling forlorn to gradually coming to like many people at Wittdün, in a lively, often charming way.

By 1996 the publisher had dispensed with the new chapter "War Time," and the story ends, as it did in 1921, with Annemarie's return to her home in Berlin.