The amazing tale of Ali Pasha by Michael Foreman

The amazing tale of Ali Pasha by Michael Foreman (Templar, 2013)

9 chapters; 128 pages with numerous beautiful colour illustrations

Subjects: World War One, Gallipoli, Egypt, Navy, animals, tortoises, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

I tracked down this title after reading an article in the Guardian that asked well-known authors, “What are the best first world war books for children?” This book was Michael Morpurgo’s pick.  

On the cover, it is subtitled “a story of fear, friendship and courage”. The story, based on fact, is that of Henry Friston, a 21-year-old seaman on the HMS Implacable. In April 1915, the Implacable sails to Gallipoli and Henry and his gunner mates are sent on shore at X Beach (one of the five landing beaches at Cape Helles) to act as stretcher bearers. Sheltering after a shell blast, he finds a tortoise and determines to take it - against orders - back onto the ship with him. Soon afterwards the Implacable leaves for Egypt and Ali Pasha becomes a companion and good luck totem for the four friends who keep his existence on board a secret.

The author describes these events through the eyes of a young reporter, Trevor Roberts, who in turn hears them from Henry himself as an “old man” (actually not that old – only 59! – but presumably seemed so to the reporter!)

The endpapers contain family photographs of Henry as a young boy at school, a 13-year-old in his first job at the “Big House”, a sailor in his Navy uniform, and after the war as a bus driver, tram conductor, father and (really) old man. There is an afterword by the author explaining how and when he met Henry, his son Don and Ali Pasha himself.  

The final pages show some media coverage of Ali Pasha (who made The Times and even got to appear on the BBC’s Blue Peter show) and tell of how he outlived Henry by  ten years and died, aged at least 90 but quite possibly over 100, in 1987. By then, he had lived with the Friston family for 72 years.

You can see some of the beautiful illustrations from the book in Ali Pasha in pictures.  

Reviews:

Books for Keeps says that “most stories for this age group about the Great War concentrate on the trenches and the Army fighting in France, and it is refreshing to hear of the Navy’s part in the campaigns and especially of the part it played at Gallipoli.”

Info on the author: 

Michael Foreman is primarily an illustrator, but his book War boy : a wartime childhood tells of growing up (he was born in 1938) in an English fishing village during World War Two. It is followed by After the war was over.

There is a lovely article about him here in the Guardian, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his first book.

Other books you might like:

Anything else written or illustrated by Michael Foreman about war (or peace), including War game, War boy : a wartime childhood and The General and also The little ships by Louise Borden. 

NZ connections:

A number of tortoises made it back to New Zealand after World War One - not all of them alive. One of the exhibits at the National Army Museum in Waiouru is a tortoise shell from Gallipoli. 

This tortoise didn’t enjoy the same long life as Ali Pasha, but there was another Gallipoli tortoise that did – in fact, Torty is still alive and living in Hawkes Bay. (Tortoises have been known to live to over 200 years old.) 

KATHY WEBB/ The Dominion Post

The tale of the Anzac tortoise by Shona Riddell, illustrated by official Defence Force artist Matt Gauldie, was partly inspired by the story of another tortoise which was given to a nurse by a wounded soldier and lived out its life on the Kapti Coast.

Matt Gauldie

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The Belgian twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins

The Belgian twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins (Houghton Mifflin, 1917)

18 chapters; 192 pages

Subjects: World War One, Belgium, refugees, twins, families, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

This is quite exciting as I’ve been wanting to read some older books, which can be hard to access in print, but I’ve just realised that they are accessible online, for example on Project Gutenburg. This title even seems to be on youtube as an audiobook. 

Jan and Marie are twins (as we know from the title), 8 years old, living on a farm in Belgium. It’s summer, harvest time; everything is peaceful and idyllic. There are rumours of a German army at the borders, but Belgium is neutral and surely she will be protected.

The men of the village are called away to join the army and it is hard for the women and children to know what is happening. (“There were no daily papers in Meer, and now there were no young men to go to the city and bring back the gossip of the day, as there had used to be.”) Then news comes that the Germans have crossed the eastern border and want to cross into France. That night their mother fastens a locket around Marie’s neck, and tells her, “You must wear it always… and remember that your mother's name is Leonie Van Hove, and your father's name is Georges Van Hove. If by any chance—which God forbid—we should become separated from one another, keep the locket on your neck, and our names in your memory until we meet again; for if such a thing should happen, do not doubt that I should find you, though I had to swim the sea to do it!"

When the “great tidal wave” of “a long gray line of soldiers on horseback” approaches the village, their mother hides the twins and the dog in the vegetable cellar. When they venture out again, the house has been ransacked for food and their mother has disappeared. In fact “there was not a human being but themselves in the entire village; all the others had been driven away like sheep, before the invading army.”

The children are brave and appealing and never lose faith that their mother will find them. The dialogue is realistic and often funny - here are a few examples:

• "I think I could be braver if I had some breakfast," sobbed Janke.
• "I don't see anything to laugh at," said Jan with dignity; "it might have happened to any man."
• "She said no matter what happened we should never despair, and here we are despairing as hard as ever we can."

Marie and Jan go in search of their mother and join a flood of refugees on the road to Antwerp and safety in Holland. On the way they are taken in by an old woman, then a family on board a barge who take care of them and protect them from noticing too much of what is happening (burning houses and villages) but they can’t help seeing all the German soldiers.  Just in time they escape the siege and bombing of Antwerp and reach Rotterdam where they are placed in the care of the British Consul and put on a boat going to England, then taken to a large country house set aside for homeless Belgians.

“At night they and the other homeless children slept in little white cots set all in a row in a great picture gallery… Every day more Belgians came, and still more, until not only the big house, but the stable and outbuildings were all running-over full of homeless people.”

The next stage of their journey is by sea to New York to live with a childless Belgian couple who have offered to look after them. “They had chicken for supper, and, after that, ice cream! Jan and Marie had never tasted ice cream before in their whole lives! They thought they should like America very much.”

The last chapter is called THE MOST WONDERFUL PART, so you can guess it has a happy ending. It does seem coincidental, but the Preface says that “this story of two little Belgian refugees is based upon the actual experience of two Belgian children, and the incident of the locket is quite true." I tried to find proof of this, and couldn't - it would be fascinating to know the background to the sorry.  

Reviews:

You can read a short, but very early, review of this book in the New York Times for December 9, 1917. 

Booksylvania posts reviews by 11-year-old Lucy: "This book is inspired by the actual events in Belgium, of two Belgian children. I loved this book because of the truth in it."

About the author

Lucy Fitch Perkins (1865-1937), American author, educator and illustrator, wrote the popular Twins series of books. Born in Maples, Indiana, she studied at the Fine Arts School in Boston, then worked as a book illustrator with the an educational company and taught at art school. In August 1891, she married Dwight Perkins, an architect and teacher. Her first book (The Dutch Twins) was published when she was 48, and she kept writing one or two books a year from then on, wanting to give children "a correct idea of life in other countries" and to encourage "a spirit of friendliness and good will for children of other nationalities."

You can find a list of all her twins books here. What is quite astonishing is that this book was published while the war was still going, so that (as the Suggestions to teachers says) “American children who have been giving their pennies to help take care of little Belgian children will find this new "Twins" book one of the most appealing that Mrs. Perkins has ever written.” The French twins (1918) was also written in war time.

Things I didn't know

I didn't know anything about Belgian refugees in England and recently came across this article about the thousands who fled across the Channel when the Germans invaded. Many of them settled in a refugee community in Elisabethville, near Durham. Both of these articles feature some fascinating facts and photographs.

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Valentine Joe by Rebecca Stevens

Valentine Joe by Rebecca Stevens (The Chicken House, 2014)

15 chapters; 154 pages

Subjects: World War One, France, Ypres, Belgium, Menin Gate, grandparents, boy soldiers, time travel, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

Rose’s father died a year ago and she still misses him so much that she secretly sends him texts on her phone. Her grandad takes her along on a trip to visit his uncle’s grave in Ypres, and in the cemetery she comes across the grave of a young soldier who died just before his sixteenth birthday. A stray dog leads her into a time slip adventure where she goes back in time to World War One and meets the soldier, 15-year-old Valentine Joe. As well as being an adventure, this also turns into a way of Rose coming to terms with her father’s death.

The best part of this book for me was the relationship between Rose and her grandad, which is teasing, funny and affectionate, as shown by their nicknames for each other. I found parts of the story slightly disjointed, which reflects the fact that Rose keeps getting thrown back into different times. She is often unsure where or when she is, or what is happening, which made it a bit confusing for the reader too.

Rose is 14 (and not a very sophisticated 14), and for the sake of the plot, she has to go off on her own at night, but I wasn’t sure if her grandad would really have let her wander round the streets of a strange town in the dark, no matter how safe the hotel keeper assured them it was.

This would appeal to readers who like time travel and a touch of romance as well as a war story. I wonder if it would also appeal more to British children who are more likely to go on school trips to visit the graves. 

Reviews:

The first chapter is online on the Guardian children’s books site, which also has a review (“It’s only a slim volume, but in its 150 pages Rebecca Stevens manages to weave a perfect war story: gripping, heartbreaking, realistic, witty and full of hope.”)

The Bookbag also refers to its length and calls it “small in terms of number of pages”, but “decidedly big in terms of themes and emotional weight” with "one of my favourite endings of the year".  

Author’s website

Rebecca Stevens has been an actor, a standup comedian and a script writer for children’s television, writing for shows like Mr Bean and Postman Pat. This is described as “her first solo book project.”

You can see Rebecca Stevens here reading from Valentine Joe.

And here on the BookTrust website ("telling the story of the short life of a real person"), she writes an interesting piece on using someone else’s story, or someone else’s life as the basis for your book:

Did I have the right to use Joe and the events of his tragically short life for the purposes of my book? I don't know... Although I managed to contact one of his relatives who gave me her blessing (and I've subsequently met another), it still felt wrong, disrespectful somehow, to put myself in his shoes, imagine his experiences from his point of view. So I decided to tell his story through the eyes of a character who was entirely invented, someone I felt closer to. Rose is a 14 year old girl from the present day, who goes to Ypres with her granddad.”

She also talks about her own grandfather who signed up when he was 16, but was sent home when a doctor suspected his real age. (He signed up again at 18 but survived the war.)

Other books you might like:

The topic of boy soldiers is a popular one. Charlie and Tommo in Private Peaceful sign up at nearly 16, so does William in My mother’s eyes: the story of a boy soldier, Sydney in One boy’s war and Harry and Jack in The horses didn’t come home. The boys in War game are very young as well.

“Boy soldiers” by Norman Bilbrough in School Journal, Part 4, No 3, 2008 tells the story of two young soldiers, Stan Stanfield and Len Coley, who fought in World War One. 

The red suitcase by Jill Harris and Charlotte sometimes by Penelope Farmer are war-related time travel stories. When the guns fall silent by James Riordan also uses the device of a child visiting the war graves with a grandfather.

Links

Private Valentine Joe Strudwick was a real soldier. He was born in Dorking, Surrey, and you can read more about him here on the website of the Dorking Museum.

"Not gone from memory or from love"

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The little ships by Louise Borden

The little ships by Louise Borden, illustrated by Michael Foreman (Pavilion, 1997)

32 pages

Subjects: World War Two, England, France, Dunkirk, boats, girls, picture books (Year 3-6)

Some covers have the subtitle: The heroic rescue at Dunkirk in World War II

Synopsis

In May 1940, the unnamed narrator lives with her father, a fisherman, in the town of Deal on the Kent Coast.  She is a girl, but “fisherman on the beach said I was my father’s daughter.” Her brother John is away fighting in France.  When word comes that half a million British and French soldiers are trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, she disguises herself as a boy in some of her brother’s old clothes and joins her father (in his fishing boat the Lucy) and an armada of "little ships" that sets sail across the English Channel to rescue them.

I didn’t know that people from English villages and towns actually signed up to go and help, as shown in one of the illustrations. And I didn’t know that soldiers brought back their pet dogs (and some strays) with them – over 200 dogs were aboard ships landing in Dover!

There is a map in the front, and a historical note and excerpt from Winston Churchill’s famous speech (“we shall fight on the beaches…”) at the end. Some of the pages have a lot of writing on them, and I would think that the text is longer than that of an average picture book. There are a lot of illustrations of boats and ships, which I guess is understandable!

Reviews:

Kirkus reviews (always a prestigious place to get a review) calls this "A moving, fictionalized account of the ``miracle of Dunkirk,'' in which an armada of 861 ships ferried to safety across the English Channel over 300,000 Allied soldiers who had been trapped in northern France by the Germans."

The Children's War blog says it is "an excellent book for introducing the topic of Dunkirk to younger kids but is also a good teaching tool for older kids who may already know something about World War II."

Author’s website

Louise Borden is an American writer from Cincinnati.  I’d never heard of her before reading this book, but now I’m hoping to read more of her work. Her website has a very readable section about Becoming a writer (under the About button). I like how she talks about riding home on her bicycle as a child: “Pedaling slowly up my street may be where I learned perseverance, something all writers need when they are working alone at their desks.”

And I love what she says about writers needing to have thinking time. It’s a long quotation but it makes so much sense to me: 

“Often I am in my car, driving to new places to meet new people, and to talk about writing. I have a lot of thinking time on those miles. And I have a lot of thinking time when I am working in my garden at home. Thinking time: It's so very essential for a writer. I think about new ideas for books, and new ways to write them. I think about what is important to me, and the new things that I want to learn. I think about the books I read as a child—and the books I am reading today. 

I think about my family who are my great encouragers. And my wonderful editors who understand, in just the right way, my creative vision for a picture book. These thoughts always inspire me to return to my desk and begin working on a rough draft for a new manuscript.”

Info about the illustrator

You can read more about Michael Foreman on my review of his book War game.

Other books you might like:

The snow goose and The dolphin crossing, both already reviewed on this blog, are other books about Dunkirk. The evacuation of Dunkirk has a resonance for England that is perhaps a bit like Gallipoli for us in New Zealand: a defeat, but a heroic failure.

Things I didn’t know

Louise Borden’s website has pictures of her research trip for writing this book. She took part in one of the Crossings of the Association of Dunkirk’s Little Ships (as referred to in the Foreword), which is “the surviving remnants of the intrepid band of assorted boats and yachts that contributed so much to the miracle of Dunkirk.” 

I didn't know there was an Association of Dunkirk's Little Ships! There  is some fascinating info about it on their website, including an answer to the question “how do I identify if my boat took part in the Dunkirk evacuations?” 

The Association returned to Dunkirk in May 2015 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, with 50 Little Ships escorted by the RNLI and the Royal Navy. There are some great photos and descriptions in this newspaper report from the Telegraph.  

Links

There's a You tube clip here, which describes itself as WW II : RARE COLOR FILM : DUNKIRK : PART 3 OF 3 1939 1940.

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The battle of Messines Road by J K & W J Moloney

The battle of Messines Road by J K & W J Moloney (Willsonscott Publishing, 2015)

43 chapters; 348 pages

Subjects: World War One, France, England, Ireland, Vietnam, diaries, bullying, junior fiction (Year 7-9)

Synopsis

This story is set in Karori, a suburb of Wellington where Messines Road really does exist, as do several other street with names related to World War One. The year is 1968, and 10-year-old Zac is in strife on several fronts; he is often in trouble at school, doesn’t have many friends, things are stressed at home and we learn that his dad is away at the Vietnam War. On top of that, he hates his paper run and longs for an easier, shorter one with fewer hills. However, it’s through his paper run that he meets old Mr Moloney and begins to read to him in the afternoons – initially as a punishment, and at first from the newspaper, but later from Mr Moloney’s old war diaries, dated from 1915 to 1917.

I liked seeing the growing relationship between Zac and Mr Moloney, and the diary entries are well-written and interesting, but their length could provide challenging and I wonder if some younger readers will skip parts of them and just follow Zac's story. I have listed this book under Junior Fiction, but the publisher's blurb says "the two intertwined narratives will hold a wide-range of reader interest and the perspective of 10-year-old Zac will capture the attention of the young adult market while still appealing to more mature readers."

Like many other men of the time, Jack Moloney (see below) was a fluent and observant writer, and other readers might prefer these sections of the book. The parts of the diary that I enjoyed most were not about the fighting, but about aspects of the day to day organisation of war that you don’t often read about. I liked the descriptions of the officers’ training course at Cambridge, his trip on leave to Ireland, playing football, visiting London and (especially) his accidental meeting with Rudyard Kipling at a hotel in Bath.

Having Zac read the diaries out loud presents a few challenges. It makes for long sections which don’t directly affect Zac himself, and I wasn’t convinced that a 10-year-old who has trouble pronouncing “Heliopolis” and “Bedouin” would be able to cope with the vocabulary, foreign names and some of the concepts involved. The switch between Zac’s everyday life and the diaries also requires a degree of repetition to get him over to Mr Moloney’s place, and starting and finishing each day’s reading.  The chapters where Zac and Mr Moloney attend the Anzac Day service at the Cenotaph, with more action and dialogue, are more immediate and gripping. (I also wondered why Zac’s brother and sister are seldom, if ever named. Perhaps it’s to show the fractures in the family – but I would have liked to know!)

Thanks to Willsonscott Publishing for sending me a copy of this book to review. I hadn’t heard of them before, but their website says they "specialise in publishing non-fiction books with a New Zealand, Australian or special international military content and personal perspective" and have “a worldwide reputation for sourcing and producing high quality titles on New Zealand military history, covering noteworthy actions and previously untold stories from many theatres of war.”

You can read a preview of the book (the opening two chapters) here on the publisher’s website.

Reviews:

The National (an Abu Dhabi English-language newspaper) calls it "an interesting hybrid of factual diary and dramatic story". 

There is another review here on Bookfabulous (fabulous title for a blog!) 

Author’s website

This book has an intriguing story behind its authorship. Two authors are listed on the title page: J K Moloney and W J Moloney.

J K (John Keith, also known as Jack) Moloney was the original author of the diaries that Zac reads in the book. He was a 22-year-old law student when he left for WW1 in October 1915. After the war, he settled in Christchurch where he married and had three children, worked as a barrister and became involved in rugby administration, including being President of the Canterbury Rugby Union. His death certificate (from 1971) is reproduced at the back of the book and this is his record on the Auckland Museum Cenotaph website.

W J (William) Moloney is Jack’s grandson. He grew up in Karori, has a Master’s degree in War Studies and worked as a military analyst for many years. He is married with three children and currently lives in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Jack Moloney’s 120,000-word WW1 diary is held by National Archives, and William has transcribed it over a number of years, as well as researching the stories of some of the men mentioned in it.  This is the diary that Zac reads out loud. William says that his grandfather, who died before he was born, and “Mr Moloney” in the book “have some similarities but they are not the same.”

Other books you might like:

Reading this book made me realise that I don’t know many other books written about Vietnam for younger readers. (There might be plenty of American books that I’m not aware of.)  There is a lot of concentration on WW1 commemorations at the moment, and I’m sure many children wouldn’t know that public opinion was so divided over our involvement in the Vietnam War.

One non-fiction title is Leon Davidson’s Red Haze (Black Dog Books, 2006), about the experience of New Zealanders and Australians in the Vietnam War.

I have reviewed My mother's eyes: the story of a boy soldier by Mark Wilson, one of three books in his war trilogy which also includes Vietnam diary. Gary Crew's Memorial also refers to the Vietnam War. 

Links

You can read more about New Zealand's involvement in the Vietnam War on the NZ History website, which says that “More than 3000 New Zealand military and civilian personnel served in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975... At its peak in 1968, New Zealand’s military force numbered only 548. Thirty-seven men died while on active service and 187 were wounded. Two civilians serving with the surgical and Red Cross teams also lost their lives.”

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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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No stars at the circus by Mary Finn

No stars at the circus: to hide is to survive by Mary Finn (Walker Books, 2014)

ISBN 978-1-4063-4733-3

Chapters (unnumbered) each about 4-5 pgs long; 266 pages

Subjects: World War Two, France, Paris, Jews, circus, family, deaf, junior fiction (Year 5-8)

Synopsis

Ten-year-old Jonas Alber lives in Paris with his father (a watchmaker and jeweller), his mother (a former pianist) and his younger sister Nadia, who is deaf. When the Germans occupy the city, the family is forced to leave behind their shop and their home and move to another part of town. Jonas makes friends with an Italian family who are part of a circus troupe, and by chance, he is staying with them during the night of 16 July 1942, known as la Rafle, when thousands of Jewish men, women and children were rounded up. Jonas finds out later that these people were held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel’ d’Hiv for short) for several days and eventually sent eastwards. He doesn’t know what has happened to them after that (and it’s possible he will never know.)  

By another lucky chance, his mother has slipped into his pocket the address of her former piano teacher, and when it becomes too dangerous for him to stay with the circus folk, he is smuggled into the Professor’s house. “We just don’t know where the boy’s family was sent to. We became his second family," says Signor Corrado. "Now, Monsieur, I’m asking you to be his third.”

Jonas lives in hiding in an attic and keeps a diary in a series of notebooks, until even the Professor’s house is not safe any more and a new plan has to be made for him. 

Jonas’ family life is lovingly drawn, and his parents’ care and concern for their children in the privations of war is easy to see. A lot is made of the special sign language that the family has developed to be able to communicate with Nadia.  I kept expecting this to play some crucial part in the plot, but when it was finally used, it was a bit of a letdown as the same information was soon afterwards delivered in spoken form.  

An afterword explains some of the historical facts on which the story is based. The chance meeting between Jonas and the circus folk seems a bit too coincidental; however, Mary Finn explains that “the circus, if not perhaps my Italians, was real, even during the Occupation of Paris. I found it in wartime photographs taken by Robert Doisneau… and others.”

After all, many events in life do stem from a chance encounter – and after this first meeting, the events that follow are steered by Jonas’ own character. It is because he is the sort of boy he is – outgoing, curious, engaging, interested in the world – that the circus performers respond to him, become fond of him, include him in their routines and call on him when they need help – and are then able to help him in turn. 

The author is good at showing us only what Jonas knows, or can understand, and his ten-year-old voice (with its occasional asides and jokes) is very convincing. The relationship between him and the Professor is also a significant part of the story.

Reviews

The lovereading4kids site includes a summary which is also available elsewhere.  And here is another review on the Snuggling on the sofa blog (nice name!) 

Author’s website

This interview was published in Lovereading4kids for the publication of Mary Finn’s debut novel, Anila’s journey. “Mary Finn worked for years as a magazine journalist with Radio Telefis Eireann, the Irish Broadcasting service. She lives in Dublin with her son and works as a freelance writer. Ten Things you didn’t know about Mary Finn include the fact that she and her son once met Roald Dahl in Galway.

Another interview on Gobblefunked talks about the inspiration for and process of writing the book. She also talks about exactly which parts of Paris in her book (streets, parks and statues) are real. "But the original prompt for my story came when I saw the plaques erected on so many school walls, in the centre of Paris as throughout France. These remember the Jewish pupils, seized by the Nazis, who never returned to their schools."

Other books you might like

My book Lighthouse family, set in WW2, also includes a deaf sibling: Frances' younger brother Stephen. I found out during my research for this book that the use of sign language was frowned on at the time, at least in the New Zealand of the 1940s. Deaf children were encouraged to rely on lip reading, but in schools for the deaf they would use sign language out of sight of the teachers.

NZ connections

New Zealand even gets a mention here! Jonas has little to read except for an encyclopaedia, where he reads about basking sharks, salmon and albatrosses that “go to places like New Zealand” to lay their eggs and “lay them near a cliff so the first thing the chick will see when it hatches is the ocean.”

Things I didn’t know

Every time I read a children’s book set in war time, I pick up some new snippet of information. I’ve recently read Suite Francaise, by Irène Némirovsky  (1903-1942) about life in France under German occupation. I probably won’t review it here as it’s not a children’s book (although some young adults might read it) but it contains detailed descriptions of the panicked flight from Paris that so many people undertook. However, even that book didn’t include this detail of the “cloud of black smoke” that drifted over Paris and “rained black rain”, because the car factories on the outskirts of the city were burning.

Flea circuses are a real thing, with a long history! (Did you know a flea can jump 30,000 times without a break?)  (Who counted??)

La Rafle: this article in the NY Times points out how the round-up of Parisian Jews was planned for the night of 14 July, until it was realised that Bastille Day might not be the best date to choose.

There is a memorial at the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel’ d’Hiv for short)

Paris, France.  Monument to the Victims of the Deportation to the Velodrome d'Hiver byWalter Spitzer, dedicated 1994. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Links

Robert Doisneau is mentioned by Mary Finn as a wartime photographer whose most famous photograph, taken in 1950 for Life magazine, is “Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville (The Kiss by the Hotel de Ville). This article tells the story behind the photo, including law suits and disputed identities. You can see the famous photo and read more about him here.

Have you read it?

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