Alice at the Home Front by Mardiyah A. Tarantino

It is sometimes a serendipitous world.  Now sooner did I write about plane spotting in December, than I started reading a book about an 11 year old girl who really wants to be a plane spotter.  Alice Calder has memorized all the plane silhouettes on her plane spotting cards, has a brand new log book and a pair of binoculars.  All she is missing is her mother's permission.  But when her mom figures out that Alice has been plane spotting out the window one cold night in December 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island, she takes away her plane spotting equipment.  Now how will anyone be able to recognize her as the important spotter she fancies herself as?

Alice wants to do something more for the war than just writing to her Uncle David (almost) everyday. So the next day, after school, she heads over to the Red Cross, where she can fold bandages for wounded soldiers.  On her way, she envisions herself being introduced on the radio as a real patriot for her bandage folding.  Though is it satisfying enough work, Alice still  dreams of being a plane spotting heroine.

Then, as she and her Gramps are preparing a bomb shelter at home, Alice talks him into letting her use her grandmother's opera glasses (if it's OK with mom) and hits on the idea of joining the plane spotters in the Ground Observation Corps.  But when she asks Mr. Parker, the head of the corps, about joining, he tells her she is too young.  Taking pity on her, he gives Alice an old Ground Observer's manual that is still serviceable.

Civil Air Patrol  

One day, after dancing class, Alice runs in her old friend (and crush) Jimmy Brownell, 16.  Over cokes, he tells her he has joined the Civil Air Patrol her and will be training to get a pilot's license.   In CAP, he will fly his dad's plane over the coast looking for enemy submarines.

Sure enough, Jimmy gets his license and begins flying and Alice flies with him, at least in her imagination.  Meanwhile, with hard won permission to plane spot, Alice does her patriotic duty spotting and keeping a meticulous log book.  But then, one cold winter night, a phone call comes, saying that Jimmy's plane was lost over the sea because of a nor'easter and it doesn't look good.  Upset, Alice passes out and spends a number of days in bed, seriously ill.

When she recovers, she is told that Jimmy had been found alive, but in pretty bad condition.  And to her chagrin, Alice discovers that binoculars and log book have been take away once again.  And that would seem to be the end of Alice's spotting days.  Or is it?  There is a big surprise in store for Alice and her meticulous log book.

Alice at the Home Front is a story that really demonstrates the desire of young people in WWII to do something, anything to help the war effort.  The war wasn't something far away on unimaginable battlefields to them.  They felt the effect of it wherever they lived.  Rationing, bomb shelters, air raid sirens and blackout were the kinds of things that brought it all home for them every day.  Tarantino has given the reader a picture into what it was all about for them through Alice.

Plane Spotting Cards

Plane spotting was a big very big thing for kids and there were all kinds of ways to learn plane identification, including playing cards with images on them  It was something they could do right in their own backyard and maybe feel a little more empowered than they actually were.  And naturally, kids could get pretty competitive about who could identify and/or spot the greatest number of different planes.  And I suspect that lots of kids, like Alice, had Walter Mitty-like dreams be being a hero/heroine.  And it is part of what made Alice at the Home Front such a realistic novel.

This is a heart-warming story with lots of humorous bits, lots of slang and some pretty serious stuff, too.  I loved that she wanted to be a plane spotter, and really was dedicated to it, even at the risk of falling out the window.  The most amazing part of the novel was that a 16-year-old boy was allowed to fly a plane alone the way Jimmy did, but it certainly demonstrates how different times were back then.

This book was recommended for readers age 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library.

Be sure to visit the National Museum of the Civil Air Patrol where you can see an extensive online exhibit of the role CAP played in World War II.

Victory through Plane-Spotting

Exactly 68 years ago today, December 15, 1944, band leader and Army Air Force Major Glenn Miller boarded a US Army UC-64A Norseman aircraft at the RAF Twinwood Farm airfield in Bedford, England to fly to Paris unbeknownst to his superiors.  The plane took off at 1:55 BST (British Summer Time) and was never seen again, nor was its wreckage ever found.  Miller and his army orchestra (they flew on a different plane) were scheduled to entertain the troops stationed there, now that the Nazis had been run out of northern France.

There were lots of theories about what may have happened to the plane.  One theory was that the pilot might have been disoriented by the foggy weather and flown into the English Channel.  Another speculated that the plane expereinced some kind of mechanical failure and went down in the Channel.  And still another theory was that the plane may have strayed into a restricted area that was used for returning bombers to jettison their bombs and was hit by friendly fire.  In the end, though, what happened to Glenn Miller and the other occupants of the plane has remained a mystery.  

But now, at least a part of that mystery has been solved and by 17 year old Richard Anderton, who, like so many kids during World War II, was interested in plane spotting.  Anderton worked at the Woodley Airfiled near Reading and kept meticulous records of aircraft flying around the airfield.  What is entry proves is that the pilot was flying on course and on time, which dispells the above theories.  

What ultimately happened to the plane is still a mystery to be solved, and hopefully it will be one day.  

Anderton worked spotting planes, but plane spotting, watching the skies for enemy aircraft, was also a very popular hobby for younger kids from England to the US and as far away as Australia.  It was a way of feeling like they were doing something for the war and being able to quickly identity a plane in the sky became a source of pride and sometimes competition.  Kids quickly learned how to identify planes and in many places the Civil Defense relied on these kids to report any enemy aircraft flying through their skies.  Characteristics like the size, shape of the plane and it's wing were easily recognizable in silhouette and beside school and Civil Defense, kids has any number of ways to learn plane recognition.   For only 10¢, kids could send for manuals like the very popular one from Coka-Cola  called Know Your War Planes.  Author Robert Westall based his character Sonny's interest in plane recognition in Time of Fire on his own interest during the war.  When Sonny's mother is killed by a bomb, he is able to pinpoint exactly what kind of plane dropped the bomb thanks to learning plane recognition from a manual he always carried with him..

And if kids didn't have manuals, there were any number of other way they could learn plane recognition, for instance whenever they played card games they could use a deck of plane spotter cards.  Charts could be found in comic books, magazines and newspapers.  In 1941/42, South Dakota artist Hubert Mathiew drew a "Spot Your Plane" feature in the newspaper which not only showed what the plane looked like, but also told something about it.  And just in case you got hungry while learning plane recognition, Wonder Bread offered Aircraft Spotter Dial, Bond Bread offered airplane recognition blotters and Cushman's Bakery offered Airplane Cards, to name a few.

And last but not least, in 1942 kids were asked to make 500,000 model planes to help train civilians and people in the armed forces in plane recognition.  They made both Allied planes and enemy planes for the military.  They used a template similar to this:

If this reminds you of those lightweight glider planes you may have played with as a child, they are indeed very similar to that.

I couldn't resist this - the Wonder Bread Aircraft
Spotter Dial