The Journey That Saved Curious George. The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey by Louise Borden, illustrated by Allan Drummond

This is the first time that I am participating in Non-Fiction Monday and I am very excited. I have chosen to write about The Journey that Saved Curious George by Louise Borden, though I have to be honest and say that I have never been a big fan of Curious George, but I have a foster child who was (she is now 22 and a recent college grad - hurray.) We recently went to the Jewish Museum in New York City to see the exhibition they have about the Reys' escape from Nazi occupied Europe. It was an excellent exhibit, but unfortunately, it ends on August 1st. If you have time this week and happen to be in NYC, it is definitely worth seeing. If you can't make it to the museum, be sure to look at their website at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/curiousgeorge

Naturally, after seeing this exhibit, I went to the library and borrowed the companion book. The Journey that Saved Curious George begins with a short biography of Hans Augusto Reyersbach, who later became known as H A Rey and his future wife Margarete (Margret) Waldstein. They were both born and raised Jewish in Hamburg, Germany though they didn't know each other then. They met and married in Brazil and eventually moved to Paris. The majority of the book is then devoted to their flight through France on bicycles built by Rey, always just ahead of the Nazis. Their lives are paralleled with the evolution of the Curious George character. The story is told in simple prose by Borden that never condescends to the reader, although it is written more for 9-12 year old than for younger kids who might still be reading the Curious George books. The ink and watercolor illustrations by Allan Drummond are just wonderful and supplemented throughout with photos and documents belonging to the Reys'. Many of the photos were taken by Margret Rey.

This is one of my favorite illustrations from the book, detailing people fleeing from Paris. While Drummond's illustration looks rather whimsical, it still manages the catch the sense of tension and fear people must have felt. The Reys' loved Paris and it must have been a very difficult decision to flee, leaving behind most of their personal belongings, their friends and way of life for the unknown. But many people, like the Reys', were forced into making that choice to save their lives.

The Journey that Saved Curious George reminded me of an old novel I was given and had read a while back called The Schoolgirl Fugitives by Agnes M. Miall. Published in 1942, it is about two English schoolgirls who must flee their boarding school in Paris as the Nazis approach. Their flight through the French countryside is very similar to the one made by the Reys'.

A book guide for The Journey that Saved Curious George is available from the publisher Houghton Mifflin at http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/journey_lp.shtml It is recommended for educators and librarians, though I think it could be valuable to anyone interested in H.A. and Margret Rey and their escape from France and the Nazis.


Alex

Non-Fiction Monday is hosted this week by http://www.shelf-employed.blogspot.com/

In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton

In her New York Times review of the novel Time of Trial, Mary Stoltz wrote:
“When Hester Burton…writes a historical novel, it is not a modern romance with appliqués of research but a sound portrait of the period, presented with unobtrusive scholarship.” (NYT Book Review, May 10, 1964) This description could just as easily be applied to Burton’s 1968 World War II novel In Spite of All Terror, an ALA Notable Children’s Book. The title is taken from a speech given by Winston Churchill on 13 May 1940 in the House of Commons:

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
Burton’s novel begins in 1939, a year before this speech. Liz Hawtin, 15, has been living with her Aunt Ag, Uncle Herb and their children in a poor section of London since her father died in an accident when she was 12. Her mother died when Liz was 3. Liz knows that Aunt Ag resents having to care for her, even though her father’s insurance money pays for her private school (which he insisted she go to) and helps support the family. But now the money is running out and it is possible that Liz may not be able return to school for her last year.

Then the Germans invade Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and Britain announces plans for evacuating all school children to the country in case of war at government expense. In September 1939, Britain and France declare war against Germany and evacuations begin. Liz is sent to Chiddingford, in Oxfordshire and billeted with the Brereton family, consisting of Professor and Mrs. Brereton, sons Miles, Ben and Simon and their grandparents, General and Lady Brereton. She is happy to get away from her aunt until she discovers that Mrs. Brereton wants a boy evacuee as a companion for Miles. Although Liz once again feels like an unwanted intruder in someone else’s home, she does form a strong bond with Ben, Simon and their grandparents.

Liz has many good things in her life, which she doesn’t seem to appreciate and is an annoyingly self-absorbed girl. “What an unpleasant sort of girl I must have been?” she would think [later in life] in anguish. “How arrogant and bitter and full of self pity I was!” (page 15) But this coming of age story is about Liz’s personal victory over her own self-centeredness in spite of all the wartime terrors she faces. The turning point comes when the General and Ben sneak off to answer the call for all small boats to help with the Dunkirk evacuation. Liz realizes what they have done, running away to help them. But they refuse to take her and, after sailing down the Thames, she is dropped off at Ramsgate and told to go home. Volunteering to write out telegrams for the exhausted, wounded returning soldiers instead, Liz begins to appreciate the danger that all the men and women of Britain willingly face everyday in order to bring about victory. It is this realization that motivates Liz’s behavior for much of the rest of the story

This novel held my attention throughout and I, like the NY Times reviewer, found it to be an excellent portrait of the period without it ever feeling like it was a school history lesson. Burton’s detailed descriptions of events during the early days of the war are graphic and chilling, but provide a vivid picture of life in Britain. They are aided by the excellent black and white illustrations by Victor G. Ambrus throughout the novel. One interesting point was that Liz’s father was a communist. Burton describes how, when he wasn’t working in a print shop, he would stand on a wooden box and urge his fellow workers to join the Communist Party, but she never does anything more with it and his views seem to have no influence on Liz’s life whatsoever.

For additional information about Hester Burton and her other novels, see
http://hesterburton.blogspot.com/
The speech referred to above is Churchill’s famous “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” address and may be read and/or listened to at
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/churchill.htm
For some interesting pictures of the evacuation that are described in the novel when Ben and his grandfather are picking up soldiers see
Rickard, J (19 February 2008), Bray Dunes, East of Dunkirk, 1940, http://www.historyofwar.org/Pictures/pictures_dunkirk_bray_dunes2
Rickard, J (23 February 2008), The Dunkirk 'Ferry Service', http://www.historyofwar.org/Pictures/pictures_dunkirk_ferry_service.html
Rickard, J (19 February 2008), Troops wait at Dunkirk, http://www.historyofwar.org/Pictures/pictures_dunkirk_beach2.html

London Calling by Edward Bloor

When his hated All Soul’s Preparatory School in New Jersey is finally let out for summer, Martin Conway, 13, becomes what he calls a basement dweller. Living in the basement bedroom previously occupied first by his manic-depressive uncle and later by his alcoholic father, he only leaves to eat, occasionally to go to the store, and once to attend his grandmother’s funeral. At the funeral, he learns that she has left him the old Philco cathedral style radio that his grandfather used when he was assigned to the US Embassy under Ambassador Joseph Kennedy in London during World War II.

Martin takes the radio home and sets it up by his bed. He tunes it between stations and falls asleep listening to the static and looking at the amber glow of the dial. One night he ‘dreams’ that he is speaking to an 8 year old English boy named Jimmy, who asks Martin “Johnny, will you help me?” He has already spoken to Martin’s grandmother when she was alive, and she had said that Martin would be able to help him.
Martin finds himself somehow transported back to London during the Blitz in 1940. Jimmy is quite a talker and mentions all kinds of everyday things that only a person living then would know. The next day Martin begins looking for information about these things, and, to his surprise, many turn out to be real.

Altogether Martin sees Jimmy three times – always in London and each time Jimmy asks “Johnny, will you help me?” and tells Martin that they are at a point, a critical point. 8 September1940 is the first night of the Blitz and the two boys go to the US Embassy where Martin sees how Jimmy and his father, a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS), interact. On 15 September1940, as the Blitz continues and the RAF has its first victory over the Germans, Jimmy and Martin again go to the Embassy and witness some questionable behavior among the generals working there and a woman named Daisy Traynor. Finally, on 29 December1940, the night that St. Paul’s Cathedral escaped total destruction despite the incredible fire bombing in London, Martin realizes why Jimmy needs his help.

London Calling is a novel about critical points, as Jimmy keeps reminding Martin. A critical point is that point in time when a crucial decision must be made; in London Calling, each visit provides Martin with information that turns out to be factually correct but historically inaccurate, prompting Martin to asks his sister Margaret so many years later
“Who decides what ‘the real history of a time’ is?”
“Martin, that is a brilliant question. And the simple answer is – the winners decide…” (page 109)

Jimmy (symbolically, a point of time from the past) guides Martin (symbolically, a point of time from the present) through his process of uncovering real truths, and he begins by calling Martin by his real first name – John. It is a significant beginning – Martin was named John Martin Conway - John after his “un-heroic” alcoholic father, Martin after his “hero” grandfather General Mehan.

I liked this novel once I got into it, particularly the main character, but there is just so much going on that it is almost impossible to give a simple bare bones summary of it. It is a classic coming of age story that includes time travel, Catholicism, mysticism, bullying, and father/son relationships. Bloor brings in more historical information than most novelists who write about World War II for young readers, so it would be a field day for a social studies teacher to use.

There are also a lot of parallels and coincidences in the story, for example, the endurance of both the old cathedral radio and St. Paul’s Cathedral during the war, the continued appearance of Rembrandt’s painting of Abraham and Isaac and father and son struggles, and Jimmy’s question “Will you help me? and Britain asking the US for help to fight the Nazis and Ambassador Kennedy's unwillingness to support war aid to Britain. This is viewed as America turning its back on the UK and is symbolized by Kennedy leaving London during the bombings. Sometimes there are a few too many coincidences or the action is a little too far fetched, but I don’t mind that in a fantasy novel. The majority of the story takes place in the present, with three chapters in the past, but these chapters are just packed with action and information. Interestingly enough, I thought, as I read the book, that Edward Bloor was a British writer, and was surprised to discover he is American.

Blitzcat by Robert Westall

Robert Westall’s novel Blitzcat is the story of a female black cat named Lord Gort* who travels across England during the war in 1940-41 in search of her special owner and of the people she meets along the way. It is based on the phenomenon of psi-trailing. This is the ability of animals to find their way back to their owners, even over thousands of miles when they have become separated from one another for some reason.

Lord Gort and her family have moved from Dover, Kent to Beaminister, Dorset because her owner Geoff Wensley, a pilot in the Royal Air Force (RAF), has been transferred there but is now flying missions in France. But Lord Gort hates her strange new living situation and she instinctively knows that her special person is far away in the west and she decides to find him: “Somewhere ahead, there was endless happiness again. And she knew how to get there.” (page 8)

On her journey to happiness, Lord Gort has many experiences. Her instincts help warn a lonely, disabled plane spotter in the Observer Corps when an enemy air attack comes. Later, she finds herself at a train station where she stays because the trainloads of soldiers returning from the evacuation of Dunkirk, believing black cats are lucky, feed her well for the chance to rub her back: “’Christ, look, a bloody black cat. That’s the first bit o’ luck I’ve seen since Abbeville…’ And suddenly they were reaching out, stepping on to the platform to touch the lucky black cat. “(Page 31)

But when the trainloads of soldiers stop after 4 June, Lord Gort ends up on a trainload of soldiers heading for Dover. Back in Dover, she senses that her real person is now far away towards the east (He has indeed been transferred.) Nevertheless, she stays there a while in the billet of a Sergeant, and again her instincts warn of an air attack. Eventually, she and the Sergeant get separated in Crewe, Cheshire while traveling to Scotland and the cat begins another journey back to Dover. On the way, she has a litter of kittens on a farm outside Coventry, where she witnesses the devastating bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940.

When it is time for her to move on, one of her kittens follows. During a bitter cold snowstorm, they wind up in the barn of a suicidal woman whose husband has been killed in the war. Leaving her kitten with the woman, she resumes her search in the spring. En route, Lord Gort unknowingly get too close to a UXB, which goes off, causing her to temporarily lose her sense of smell, sight and hearing. Getting all but her hearing back, she continues on and lands at an RAF base, where she becomes a companion of a lonely rear-gunner named Tommy. Because of her deafness, she is able to fly many successful missions with him. The pilots believe she is good luck until she refuses to fly a plane, which crashes on takeoff. After that, they turn on her and try to get rid of her. She manages to sneak on a plane headed for Germany, but she and Tommy end up parachuting out of it over France. They eventually make it back to England, and Lord Gort continues her journey, making one more stop at the home of a NSPCA worker, where she has another litter of kittens. One day, she senses her real owner is near, towards the south-west in the direction of Dorset and she sets off again on a last journey.

This is only a bare-bones outline of Lord Gort’s adventures, and there is so much more to each person’s story, including that of her real owner and his family, giving the reader a well rounded picture of life during the war. Westall manages to successfully convey the sense of fear, loss and pathos war brings to people, as well as the tenacity and strength the people of Britain must have had in order to endure and carry on.

To his credit, Westall never wavers from keeping Lord Gort a cat that acts on her instincts and senses, and does not endow her with human qualities or abilities. It is one of the things that make Lord Gort so endearing. But this is definitely a YA novel because descriptions within the story can be a little raw at times, but it is definitely worth a read.

*Lord Gort (her owner thought she was a male kitten) was named for the real Lord John Gort, who was the Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Forces that ultimately ended up being evacuated from Dunkirk just before the fall of France.

Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett

Life isn’t terribly exciting in Blackbury, England in 1996 until 21 May 1941, the night of the Blackberry Blitz and the destruction of Paradise Street, where 19 residents are killed. It all begins when 13 year old Johnny Maxwell and his friends find the local bag lady, Mrs. Tachyon, lying in an alley near her overturned shopping cart and her black plastic bags strewn about, blown from the past to the present by an unexploded bomb or UXB. Johnny does the right thing and calls an ambulance to take her to the hospital. And because he is a good kid, he takes her shopping cart, her bags and her demon cat Guilty home to store in his garage until Mrs. Tachyon can reclaim them. This incident begins Johnny’s foray in time travel, accompanied by his friends Yo-less, Bigmac, Wobbler and Kristy. As Mrs. Tachyon explains to Johnny when he visits her in the hospital “Them’s bags of time, mister man. Mind me bike! Where your mind goes, the rest of you’s bound to follow. Here today and gone tomorrow! Doing it’s the trick! eh?” (page 49) And because Johnny’s mind has been on his school project about the Blackbury Blitz that is exactly where Mrs. Tachyon’s bags of time take him and his friends.

Travelling back in time, Johnny is not only faced with the dilemma of knowing what the result of the Blackury Blitz will be, but also with the possibility of changing its grim outcome. It is a classic fork in the road dilemma given a new twist, or as the mysterious Sir John, burger magnet and richest man in the world, presents it to his chauffeur in 1996 “Did you know that when you change time, you get two futures heading off side by side?...Like a pair of trousers.” (page 55-56)

In 1941, Bigmac, a skinhead who finds cars with keys in the ignition irresistible, is arrested for stealing one and then accused of being a German spy. He manages to get away from the police by stealing one of their bicycles. Thanks to Bigmac, the group is forced to return to 1996 to escape. Unfortunately, when they get there, they discover that they have left Wobbler behind. Do they go back and return Wobbler to the present time? What leg of the trousers does history follow if they leave him in 1941? What leg of the trousers does history follow is they go back for Wobbler? And who is the mysterious Sir John and what does he have to do with everything?

Johnny and the Bomb presents a number of interesting conundrums for the reader. Every fan of time travel stories knows the cardinal rule that if you manage to find a way to time travel, you must not change anything or you change the future. But doesn’t the very fact of your presence in a time you have traveled to constitute a change? So, can you change something and still have the same future result – more or less?

Johnny and the Bomb was a well done, thoroughly enjoyable novel. It is the third book in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy. The first two books are Only You Can Save Mankind (1992) and Johnny and the Dead. It was made into a movie by BBC in 2006 in the UK, but can be viewed in 10 minute increments on YouTube. Though a little different from the book, I still found it to be entertaining. Mrs. Tachyon was played by Zoë Wanamaker, who, as fans of the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone will remember, was Madame Hooch, the flying instructor (among her other numerous excellent roles.)

Speaking of the time traveling Mrs. Tachyon, there is an interesting concept in Physics called a tachyon. Essentially, a tachyon is an imaginary particle of ordinary matter that can travel faster than the speed of light, which means it can travel back in time.

It seemed appropriate to begin this blog about World War II-themed books for young readers with a time travel novel, even if the focus is not directly about the war. Historical fiction is, after all, similar to Mrs. Tachyon’s bags of time, and the novels become a portal that can transport and return me to the time period under consideration.