The war that saved my life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

The war that saved my life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Dial Books, 2015)

46 chapters; 316 pages

Subjects: World War Two, London, evacuees, family, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

I’ve always been fascinated by stories about World War Two evacuees, as it’s not part of the New Zealand war story at all. This author takes a different approach. The main character Ada is already damaged by a childhood of emotional and physical abuse by her mother, who seems to hate Ada for her disability (a clubfoot, which could have been easily fixed) and never lets her go outside. (The local children, who only ever see her waving from their window, think she is simple, not disabled.)

Ada is about ten years old, although she doesn’t know for sure. Despite being kept indoors for her whole life, she is smart and determined, and she gets her chance when her little brother Jamie comes home from school and announces that they are being sent to the country because of the war. Ada manages to escape to the train with him and as nobody else wants the two of them, they are reluctantly taken into the home of a childless woman, Susan Smith.

WW2 forms a backdrop to the story, with the neighbouring airfield and the danger of spies, and it provides several important plot points, especially at the end. The book traces the developing relationship between Ada and Susan, but also Ada’s growing sense of her own self-worth, which has been almost destroyed by her mother’s treatment of her.

Because she has lived such a restricted life up until now, Ada has never been to school, and can’t read or write.  The fact that she doesn’t know what everyday things like shops or banks are, or the meaning of many common words, is potentially tricky for a writer but Kimberly Bradley handles the challenge very skilfully.

This is a memorable story and I especially liked Susan as a character. Her life story is only hinted at, never fully described, but enough is hinted at to make it understandable, at least for older readers.      

I didn’t find Ada’s mother quite as convincing. She was so utterly malevolent that she seemed less believable, although the scene when Jamie finally realised the truth about her (which he had always been shielded from before) is very sad.

Reviews:

There are many glowing reviews of this book, such as this one on NZBookgirl. 
Kidsreads calls it “an unforgettable gripping story, one that is not only earmarked to be an award-winning novel, but also has the potential of becoming an all-time classic.”

The School Library Journal describes it as “Anne of Green Gables without quite so much whimsy” in which “hope, in whatever form it ultimately takes, is the name of the game.” “Enormously satisfying and fun to read, Bradley takes a work of historical fiction and gives the whole premise of WWII evacuees a kick in the pants.”

And this from Kirkus Reviews: “Set against a backdrop of war and sacrifice, Ada’s personal fight for freedom and ultimate triumph are cause for celebration.”

You can also find lesson plans here. 

About the author

You can find Kimberly Brubaker Bradley's website here. 

In this review on book reporter, she describes how she was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, studied chemistry at college and married her high school sweetheart, and now lives on a 52-acre farm, with ponies, dogs, cats, sheep, goats, and lots and lots of trees in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.

Other books you might like:

Other books about evacuees include: Lord of the nutcracker men by Iain Lawrence, When the siren wailed by Noel Streatfeild, Ronnie’s war by Bernard Ashley, The dolphin crossing by Jill Paton Walsh, Carrie’s war by Nina Bawden and Uprooted: a Canadian war story by Lynne Reid Banks.

Have you read it?

Have you read this book? Let me know what you think!

A winter’s day in 1939 by Melinda Szymanik

A winter’s day in 1939 by Melinda Szymanik (Scholastic, 2013)

24 chapters; 285 pages

Subjects: World War Two; Poland; family; evacuees, refugees; junior fiction (Year 7-10)

Synopsis

I should have reviewed this book before, because it is so good and has collected lots of awards and shortlistings: Storylines Notable Book 2014, Finalist 2014 NZ Post Book Awards, Finalist 2014 LIANZA Esther Glen Junior Fiction Award, Winner Librarian's Choice Award 2014 LIANZA Children's Book Awards

Melinda explains in the foreword that A winter’s day in 1939 is based on the story of her father, Leszek Szymanik, who was 12 when the Soviet Red Army invaded his homeland of Poland in 1939. His family was transported from Poland to a Russian labour camp in 1940.

The family in the book are Adam, his parents, older brother Tomasz and younger sisters Zofia and Maria. They live on a small farm, growing crops (tobacco, potatoes) and raising cows, pigs and chickens. Tragedy strikes the family at the very start of the story, followed by uncertainty and worry as Germany invades Poland – and then the Russian tanks arrive. Their farm is requisitioned (taken over by the Russians) and they are given a week to leave and find a new home - one room in a house  in a village 15km away.  

Things get worse, not better, and more long hard journeys, and much sadness, lie ahead of them.

Melinda includes a historical note, a map of the family’s journey, glossary, bibliography and a postscript about what happened next. Her foreword ends: “The past is filled with stories like these, of people who suffered terrible conditions and overwhelming sadness but remained hopeful and survived, despite everything. It is up to us to honour their memories and remember this stories to make the world a better place.”

I’m lucky to have a signed copy, and Melinda has written this in the front of my book: “We have to know the past to make a better future.”

Reviews

Booksellers NZ comments that “Melinda is a very skilled observer of family relationships, and this is what really brings the book to a higher level”.

Hooked on NZ books has links to a whole collection of reviews.

Teacher notes from Scholastic here.

About the author

Melinda has a great blog where she talks about all sort of writing issues and the writing life. In this blog post, she talks about how she came to write the book.

You can read more about Melinda here.   

Other books you might like:

Stefania's dancing slippers by Jennifer Beck tells another story of a Polish refugee family in picture book format. 

New Zealand connection

Of course there is a very real NZ connection in this case, because Melinda’s father ended up here, and so did over 700 Polish children who came out by ship and went to the Polish children’s camp at Pahiatua. It’s hard for us as an island nation to imagine what it must be like to live in a country that is surrounded by other nations and has been the site of conflict for centuries.

Links

In November 2014, there was a series of events to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Polish children at Pahiatua. You can read more about the "Polish Week" anniversary here.    

Have you read it?

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True Brit: Beatrice - 1940 by Rosemary Zibart, illustrated by George Lawrence

True Brit: Beatrice - 1940 by Rosemary Zibart, illustrated by George Lawrence  (Kinkajou Press, c2011 - thanks to the publishers for sending me this book to review)

20 chapters; 205 pages with black and white illustrations

Subjects: World War Two, England, United States, evacuees, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

12-year-old Beatrice lives in London with her upper-class family: mother, father and older brother. When the bombs start falling on London in September 1940, her parents decide to send her as far away as possible to be safe. The Children’s Overseas Reception Board says there are no more places available in Canada, but a public nurse in New Mexico has offered to take a child - and that is where Beatrice is sent, all by herself, by boat (first class) and then train.

Her father, whom she adores, gives her a red leather notebook so she can record her observations as if she is a lady explorer, like Mary Kingsley, and these notebook entries are a clever way of showing Beatrice’s impressions of her new surroundings.

Santa Fe in New Mexico couldn’t be more different from London, and Miss Clementine Pope is hard working, practical and down to earth, the complete opposite of Beatrice’s mother. Beatrice has led a sheltered life; she is used to being waited on by servants and having fine clothes and everything she wants, and to her new friends Arabella, Esteban and Ana, she comes across as faceta (spoiled, stuck up and a “little princess”). She is determined to prove them wrong, and after several months, and one big adventure in particular, Clem says “you showed us that you’ve got quite a bit of starch for a gal your age.”

This book is the first in a series (Far and Away) about children in WW2, with its own facebook page. You can read the first chapter here, and also see a book trailer – filmed on location at the Lamy train station where Beatrice first arrives in New Mexico! 

(I especially like the opening line: “Only Great-Aunt Augusta spoke up against the plan”. And I was tickled by the reference to the four children – 2 boys and 2 girls, one named Lucy, waiting on a railway platform to be sent to their great-uncle’s house in the country. Many readers don't realise that the Pevensie children in The lion the witch and the wardrobe were also WW2 evacuees.)

Reviews:

Chapter 16 review website is impressed by “the attention to detail, from descriptions of mud homes and pinon trees to ‘A-okay’ American slang”.

Questions:

Can you imagine being sent away from your family for such a long time – without any of today’s ways of communicating, like texts or emails or even phone calls – just letters to keep in touch! What would you miss the most about where you live?  

About the author

Rosemary Zibart lives in Santa Fe. She describes herself on her website as a storyteller and writer who has written “film scripts, magazine and newspaper articles, picturebooks, middle-grade and young adult novels, essays, plays, screenplays and most recently websites”.

About the illustrator

You can read about George Lawrence here. 

Other books you might like:

Carrie’s war, Archie’s war, Lord of the nutcracker men, When the siren wailed and Ronnie’s war all cover different aspects of the evacuee experience. Uprooted: a Canadian war story by Lynne Reid Banks gives a Canadian perspective.

Also mentioned here (but not fully reviewed) is Evacuee by Gabriel Alington (Walker Books, 1988) which tells the story of a timid English girl, Frances (or Fanny) sent away to the USA to live with “Aunt” Bird and her adopted daughter, Pepper. It also treats the subject of the debate within the United States as to whether or not they should join WW2.

Things I didn’t know

I didn’t know anything about Santa Fe or New Mexico so I really enjoyed the description of the landscape and town. A historical note at end says that children did come to Santa Fe in WW2, some of the thousands who were sent to Canada, the US and Australia to escape the war.

Links

There is an excellent article on Operation Pied Piper and the evacuee children here, with some great photos.

Have you read it?

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Uprooted: a Canadian war story by Lynne Reid Banks

Uprooted: a Canadian war story by Lynne Reid Banks (HarperCollins, 2014)

28 chapters; 335 pages with chapter heading illustrations

Subjects: World War Two, Canada, evacuees, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

I went into this book with few expectations, maybe because the subject of evacuees has been written about so much already. But after a few chapters, I realised I haven’t read many books about the experience from a Canadian perspective.  

One reason I liked it is that it is not only a war story but also a coming-of-age story that covers many topics: loneliness, friendship, the degree of freedom that children enjoyed back then, a growing understanding of adult relationships, the difficulty of maintaining a marriage under the stresses of distance and war. It also gives a memorable picture of the Canadian landscape (especially in winter), so different from the English countryside.

It’s summer 1940, and as war rages across Europe, ten-year-old Lindy travels by boat and then train to Saskatoon, Canada, with her Mother and her smart cousin Cameron. Canada is a long way from home but it is also full of exciting new adventures. This story is inspired by the author’s own childhood experience and her time in Canada, which must be why many of the details sound so convincing: icebergs floating in the Atlantic Ocean, the three-day train trip across the plains, playground games, Hallowe’en, skating and tobogganing in winter and holidays at the lake in summer.

Lindy’s reactions are convincing; she keeps being offered Coke to drink, but finds it sweet and sickly; she revels in a hot deep bubble bath after “the three-inches-of-hot-water ones we’d been rationed to at home”; she marvels at the powdery snow, so different from wet English snow, and the deceptive cold that can give you frostbite without your noticing.  She picks up Canadian words (candies for sweets) and relishes all the new foods: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, waffles with maple syrup, pork spare ribs cooked with brown sugar.  

She and Cameron have to cope with feelings of guilt at being safe and far from danger when London is being bombarded by bombs, as shown on the newsreels at the cinema. Is it okay for them to be happy? How do they come to terms with not being there? 

Author’s website

Lynne Reid Banks’ best-known book for children is probably The Indian in the cupboard. On her website, you can “Read my latest news, my interview with myself, and see an array of photographs and videos, and you can even listen to me read from some of my books.”

I couldn’t resist the interview, which she wrote for the very good reason that “I've been interviewed many times, but the interviewers hardly ever ask me the questions I wish they would! So here is me, interviewing myself.” (And it’s a very funny interview!)

I:	Excuse me.
Me:	What?
I:	I thought you were supposed to be interviewing me.
Me:	Sorry, I got a bit carried away. After all, writing for a living is a great life, if you don't weaken, and can keep the ideas coming.
I:	Aren't you going to ask me which is my favourite book, and to give tips for young writers, and all that?
Me:	No. How could we have a favourite book, we love them all and are proud of them, just like our children.

Other books you might like

There are lots of other books about evacuees, such as Ronnie’s war by Bernard Ashley, Carrie’s war by Nina Bawden and When the sirens wailed by Noel Streatfeild.

NZ connections

I made a nice personal link on pg 175 where Lindy talks about how terrible her handwriting was because she was still “trying to learn Canadian cursive”.

Things I didn’t know

Lots of things! For starters, I didn’t know that evacuees to Canada were called “war guests”. This was apparently because “Canadians are usually very polite and nobody wanted to hurt our feelings by calling us evacuees”.

I didn’t know that government war time restrictions meant that women who went to Canada with their children weren’t allowed to take more than ten pounds per person out of the country. This small amount was soon exhausted, so they were completely reliant on the charity of the people who offered them a home. This often put them in difficult situations, and eventually so many families complained to their Members of Parliament that the restrictions were lifted. 

I vaguely remembered hearing about a ship carrying evacuees that was torpedoed and sunk. In the book this ship isn’t named, but it could have been the City of Benares – or the Volendam.

I liked the details about the First Peoples that Lindy found out from visiting her neighbours, and was sorry when they disappeared quite abruptly from the story.

I liked the description of the river ice breaking up at the end of winter, and how the children laid bets on the day and time it would happen.

Have you read it?

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Carrie's war by Nina Bawden

Carrie’s war by Nina Bawden (Puffin, 2005; first published by Victor Gollancz, 1973)

ISBN 0-140-36456-0

15 chapters; 192 pages

Subjects: World War Two, England, Wales, evacuees, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

There are several different covers. The book I read had this cover, but in orange, not purple.

Synopsis

Now published in the Puffin Modem Classic series, this book is set in war time, when 11-year-old Carrie Willow and her younger brother Nick are sent to live in a mining village in Wales. But the “war” in the title is Carrie’s own internal war as well. The closest the actual war comes to this remote village is when an American soldier arrives to visit Auntie Lou, or when Mr Evans’ son Frederick comes home on leave. 

It is a lovely story, beautifully told, with a vivid setting and unforgettable characters. The main narrative is bookended by the story of the grown-up Carrie, coming back 30 years later to the oddly named Druid’s Bottom with her own children. She recalls the people who lived there: Albert Sandwich, Dilys Gotobed, Hephzibah Green and Mister Johnny, but then describes something as “the worst thing she ever did” and won’t go any further.    

One reason this story seems so firmly anchored in the past is that Carrie doesn’t know what happened to Druid’s Bottom and its inhabitants for 30 years, and it’s hard to imagine that being the case today, in a world of Google, texts, instant communication and information overload.

Reviews:

http://thechildrenswar.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/carries-war-by-nina-bawden.html

The annual “Great Reading Adventure” tries to get people in the English city of Bristol reading and talking about the same book.  For the 2005 Great Reading Adventure, they also chose Carrie’s war to get younger readers involved. The activity pack has some excellent info from pg 14 on about British evacuees and how the evacuation process was organised:

• The British Committee of Evacuation was set up on 26 May 1938
• Evacuation areas (places likely to be bombed) included London, Portsmouth, Southampton, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow
• Those evacuated were children aged 5-15, mothers with children under 5, pregnant women and disabled people. Most children were sent away in school groups with their teachers
• Britain and her Allies declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. By Christmas 1939, half the children who had gone away returned home as the expected air raids hadn’t happened. However, in June 1940, the Germans occupied France. Evacuation began once more and many children did not see their homes again until the end of the war in 1945
• Parents were given lists of what to pack: a gas mask, identity card, ration book, woolly jumper, warm coat, handkerchief, socks and shoes. The evacuees had labels tied around their necks with their names and addresses on. They left the cities on trains and buses
• Over three million children were evacuated during the war in Britain.

About the author

Nina Bawden was herself evacuated to Wales in the war. ‘Carrie’s story is not mine, but her feelings about being away from home for the first time are ones I remember…the sense of not being watched, brooded over by concerned adults, was heady.’ She says (in The Great Reading Adventure notes): ‘I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.’

She was seriously injured in the Potters Car rail crash in 2002, in which her husband died.  

Nina Bawden wrote more than 40 novels. She died in 2012, aged 87. 

This article in the Guardian, written after her death, talks about how Carrie’s war “has had an incendiary impact on our imagination not because it is explosive in any military sense – the guns and bombs of the second world war are not much in evidence in Druid's Bottom” but because “the novel speaks with painful truth about the ripple effects of war.”

Other books you might like

Nina Bawden writes about her childhood in her autobiography In My Own Time (1995) and her book Keeping Henry is also about evacuees who are sent to Wales.

Other books on this blog that cover different aspects of the evacuee experience are Archie’s war, Lord of the nutcracker men, When the siren wailed and Ronnie’s war.   

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The dolphin crossing by Jill Paton Walsh

The dolphin crossing by Jill Paton Walsh (Macmillan, 1967)

16 chapters; 134 pages

Subjects: World War Two, England, France, Dunkirk, boats, evacuees, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

There are several different covers and this one (Puffin modern classics) is better than some of the others! 

Synopsis

This book was a surprise as I had certainly heard of it and was sure that I had read it as a child, but actually I don’t think I ever did, as it seemed quite new to me.

The story is set in 1940 on England’s South Coast. John, aged 17, has come home from boarding school to keep his mother company as his father is away in the Merchant Navy. His older brother, whom we never meet, is a conscientious objector and has volunteered as a medical orderly in a hospital in Birmingham. The other main character, Pat, is a few years younger, and an evacuee from London; his father is fighting in France, and he and his mother, who is heavily pregnant, have been put up in a ramshackle disused old railway carriage sitting in a farmer’s field.

John has a tutor who is teaching him Latin and Greek in preparation for his exams for Oxford, and his family is obviously well-to-do, although their house has been taken over for use as a hospital and they are living in a smaller cottage in the grounds. Pat comes from a much less privileged background. The differences show in their speech and in the things they each take for granted.  John comes across as quite a “prim” character for a 17 year old; for example, he is shocked that Pat expects him to eat chips out of a newspaper parcel, in public. He is also conflicted over his brother’s decision and finds it hard to defend his choice.

The boys become friends over a project to turn an old stable into more suitable accommodation for Pat’s mother and the baby. When they start to realise what is happening in France – the thousands of Allied soldiers trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk – they hatch a plan to take John’s father’s boat, the Dolphin, across the Channel to help rescue them. Gradually they come to appreciate each other’s strengths - Pat is better at building and practical work, John is better at handling the boat - and in the end they work together as a team.

This isn't a long book; there are very few characters, and some (like Pat’s mother or John’s tutor) are lightly sketched.  After an initial scene of the local school bullies taunting Pat, we hardly ever see any more children or young people.  

The scenes of sailing the boat and the action at Dunkirk are well done and full of tension. The main sticking points for today’s readers are likely to be the vocabulary (words like “Gracious!” and “beastly”) and the dialogue which sometimes feels old fashioned, formal and wooden (for example, John’s father greets him with, “Where the hell do you think you’ve been, sir?”) 

Reviews

goodtoread.org (a parent's guide to children's books) calls it "A short but thoughtful story, focusing on the effect war has on different characters and what courage is about". 

This reviewer also comments on the uninspiring cover design and describes it as "a short book that covers a lot of ground", with a particular focus on class differences. 

One more review here from someone else who (like those mentioned in Questions below) has an issue with the ending. 

Questions

The review on goodtoread.org ends with the line: “The question of whether Pat's final action is bravery or stupidity is left open”. Another reviewer quoted above says the reader has to "decide for themselves whether Pat’s disappearance was an act of heroism or simply schoolboy foolishness."

Bravery or stupidity; heroism or foolishness - what do you think?

Author’s website

Jill Paton Walsh was born Gillian Bliss in London in 1937. She is married to John Rowe Townsend (another author). Her website includes an author interview for young readers, for example, "when did you start to write?" 

• I'm a late developer. I started only when I was 26. All the other writers I know started sensibly, when they were children. If you are thinking of being a writer, however old or young you are, start now!

There is a very funny article in the Guardian about how her self-published book Knowledge of angels made the Booker shortlist in 1994.

On the back flap is a quotation from Jill Paton Walsh

“This book is an attempt to make a serious picture for young readers of the great experience of their parents’ lives – the last war. That war raised difficult moral questions; disrupted the lives of almost everyone then living; permanently upset the social order of England, and brought out in ordinary people astonishing manifestations of courage and unselfishness. it was not a matter of cheap heroics.

For real heroics are painful and costly. I have tried to show this. The actions of my characters fall far short of the heroism of real life; they are, however, “truthful” in the sense that there really were school-boys who joined the many civilians in ferrying the British army across the Channel. I hope this is also a truthful book in another sense; when real people take real risks, they really get killed.”

Other books you might like

Jill Paton Walsh wrote other books about war, including Fireweed.

The snow goose by Paul Gallico is a haunting tale about the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Things I didn't know

How to make the most of your butter ration! Food rationing was in force and the lack of butter (and inadequacy of margarine) is often mentioned. John dreams of “great slabs of butter, too thick to spread, piled on sticky buns” and prefers to eat his ration all at once: “that way at least I can have enough to taste properly one day a week.” John’s mother spreads a thin scraping of butter on her scone and says, “The Ministry of Food adviser wrote to the paper today saying if you put it in your mouth upside down you can taste it better. Butter side against the tongue.”

Have you read it?

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Ronnie's war by Bernard Ashley

Ronnie’s war by Bernard Ashley (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2010)

ISBN 978-1-84780-162-3

190 pages; 4 sections (Blitzkrieg, Top bunk boy, The American captain, Man of the house)

Subjects: World War Two, London, England, evacuees, Blitz, Americans, VE Day, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

When war is declared in 1939, Ronnie is a boy of eleven. By VE Day, he is a young man who has left school and is working as a spot welder, although his mother wants him to get an engineering apprenticeship. In-between times, the story takes us through his experiences in four separate sections. He is caught in the Blitz, and then evacuated to a village in Lancashire where he has to cope with a chilly welcome in his new home and a hostile reception and bullying teacher at school. His father is called up for the Royal Artillery and goes missing in action, probably in the Far East. Ronnie and his mother move out of London to another village in Essex where she gets a job working on an American Air Force base.  

The scene where Ronnie goes to look for his mother is a dramatic description of the aftermath of an air raid (there is a similar scene in The machine gunners by Robert Westall, when Chas and his dad make their way across town to try and find out if his grandparents are still alive.) His relationship with his mother – its ups and downs, through his teenage years, but their underlying love for and loyalty to each other – provides a link between the four sections, as does their ongoing worry and uncertainty about what might have happened to his father.

There are many small details that help to build up a convincing picture of life in Britain during the war. I always enjoy these unexpected details – facts like what happened with the wartime football league (it was all “guest players and soldiers on leave”, and teams weren’t allowed to play more than 50km from home), or that the Anderson (air raid) shelters that people dug in their back yards had blackout curtains instead of a door. Playground games, lessons, slang and meals all have the ring of authenticity. It also features one of the few fictional descriptions of VE Day celebrations that I’ve read (there's another one in Charlotte sometimes by Penelope Farmer).

Reviews:

This review in the Guardian calls it "a slim, to-the-point volume that proves you don't need to fell an acre to conjure a convincing fictional world... Four vignettes, then, which quickly yet subtly build a full picture of what ordinary life was like for a child who spent their entire adolescence under the cloud of war."

The Historical Novel Society has another review which describes the book (with a few reservations) as "an interesting portrait of a young man in his formative years, which happen to occur against the backdrop of war". 

Author’s website

Bernard Ashley lives in London and worked for many years as a teacher and principal. His first children’s novel was published in 1974 and he has published dozens since then. One of the most well-known is Little soldier shortlisted for the Carnegie medal.

He has some lovely answers to questions here. I especially like his answer to a question I invariably get asked at every school visit: Where do you get your ideas from?

"All around me. One of the advantages of living a hectic life in one of the world's busiest cities is that there's no shortage of drama and excitement around me. Sometimes comedy, sometimes - sadly - tragedy. I never use the people I know, but certain themes recur in relationships. In the creation of characters I use bits of various people. Hitting on the right name for a character is a great help, like the right costume is to an actor."

And I liked what he said about doing research:

"My liking of travel is often satisfied by doing research for one of my stories.
I have to get it right! If I say this London bus takes you there you can depend on it being right. And if you can trust me in the practical things I hope you can trust me emotionally, too."