Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo

It’s 1988 and Michael, 11, is a pretty content kid until the day a letter arrives laying off both of his parents. After that, a “creeping misery” settled over the house, until the day Michael’s dad heads south to seek new opportunities. New opportunities are a total surprise to Michael and his mother when they arrived somewhere near Southhampton and discover his dad has bought a bought and has plans for the family to sail around the world.

And sail they do, even bringing along Stella Artois, the family dog. All goes well, with lots of interesting stops, until they are sailing away from Australia and through the Coral Sea heading to Papua New Guinea. It is there, on July 28, 1988 that they hit bad weather, and Michael, at the wheel in the cockpit, sees Stella go overboard. Trying to rescue her, he also goes overboard. Luckily so does his soccer ball, which gives him some buoyancy. 

The next morning, Michael wakes up on an island beach with Stella and no idea how he got there. It turns out the island is a jungle with a thriving wild life. After exploring all day, a hungry, thirsty Michael and Stella retreat to the shelter of a cave to spend the night as a castaway.

The next morning, and every morning after that, Michael and Stella wake up and find fresh water and carefully prepared raw fish waiting for them. Knowing he isn’t alone, Michael finally meets his benefactor while trying to build a large enough fire to be seen by a passing boat. Instead, it is seen by an elderly Japanese man, Michael’s benefactor, who quickly puts the fire out. The two get off to a rocky start, but eventually they become friends, and Kensuke, Michael learns, has been living on the island since WWII. 

Kensuke teaches Michael how to fish, cook, and even paint using ink from the octopi they catch and in return, Michael teaches him English. Kensuke, who had been a doctor in Japan, begins to tell Michael about his happy life in Nagasaki before the war, about his wife Kimi, and his son, Michiya. When war came, Kensuke joined the Japanese Navy as a doctor, and was the sole survivor of an attack on his ship. Later, overhearing some Americans talking about the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, killing everyone, Kensuke decided to remain on the island after the war had ended. 

Eventually, he realizes that Michael belongs with his family, and agrees to let him build a fire to attract a passing ship, and even agrees to leave the island, too, should a ship actually show up.

In the end, when rescue is about to happen, Kensuke chooses to remain on the island, but asks Michael not to talk about him for at least 10 years, which he does. After writing a book about his adventure with Kensuke, Michael receives a very surprising unexpected letter from Japan.

I have to admit, even though I doubted Michael and Stella would survive in a stormy ocean at night, I willingly suspended my disbelief and let myself enjoy this intergenerational story about an unusual friendship. I did find the beginning a little slow, thinking I could have lived without a lot of the descriptions about life in London, but once Michael and Stella were on the island, my interest, the excitement and the pace soon picked up its pace. I found myself very curious about Kensuke but Morpurgo delayed his story until just the right moment. 

Kensuke’s Kingdom did remind me of Theodore Taylor’s book The Cay, but without the kind of racial tension that existed at first between white Phillip and West Indian Timothy, and which actually did take place during WWII. Still, pairing these two books together would result in an interesting take on intergenerational, biracial friendships under stressful conditions (which is often when we discover the most about ourselves). 

I don’t know if it’s me, but whenever I read a book by Michael Morpurgo (and I’ve read a lot of them), I find myself being lulled into the story, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. It is actually almost hypnotic  and I think the reason why not only is disbelief suspendible, but it makes the story more real and enjoyable, even the sad bits. And, interestingly, I find I always pick a Morpurgo book whenever I’m in a nostalgic mood. 

And, yes, I found myself reaching for the tissues as I finished reading Kensuke’s Kingdom, so be warned.

Teaching Ideas has some really nice teaching ideas to use with Kensuke's Kingdom and you can also find some nice downloadable teaching resources and activities from Michael Morpurgo's website.

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

An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Michael Foreman

When 9 year old Karl is forced to go to work on weekends at a Canadian nursing home with his mother, a nurse, he finds himself drawn to an elderly patient name Lizzie.  And the attraction is mutual.  Karl is the only person there who believes Lizzie when she says that she once had an elephant in her garden.  Slowly, Lizzie tell her story to Karl and his mother.

Lizzie had lived with her mother, a zookeeper, and her young brother Karli in Dresden, Germany during World War II.  Though very much against Hitler, their dad is off fighting on the Russian front.  But when the Allies begin to bomb Germany, it is decided that the animals in the zoo would need to be put down if things got really dire.  Rather than see that happen, Lizzie's mother decides to bring a still young elephant home from the zoo and to care for her in the garden.  The elephant is named Marlene, after the famous German singer Marlene Dietrich, now living and working in America.  But in 1945, RAF planes literally firebomb Dresden, destroying most of the city center and causing residents to flee the city westward to avoid the Russian soldiers approaching from the east.  Among those refugees are Lizzie, Karli, their mother and Marlene.

It is mid-winter when the refugees head out with their pachyderm, hoping to find safety at the rural farm of some relatives who haven't spoken to Lizzie's family since the war began because they were Hitler supporters.  But when they arrive, the farm is almost completely deserted - in the barn they discover a wounded Canadian airman named Peter hiding out.  At first, their mother treats him terribly, but after he saves Karli's life, that changes.  And when the police show up at the farm looking for Peter, the family decides it is time to move on, west towards the Allies, with Peter, and of course, Marlene, who now carries 16 year old Lizzie's secret - she is madly in love with Peter.

As they head west again, the family has many more adventures and many more interesting encounters, but will they make it to safety with their elephant and their enemy soldier?

An Elephant in the Garden is based on a real story that Morpurgo and his wife heard on the BBC at 3 in the morning about a woman zookeeper in Belfast who took an elephant home each night with her When the Germans started bombing Ireland.  Naturally, Morpurgo gave the story his own special twist.  The result in an interesting narrative, though perhaps no one of his best.

Almost from the start, my interest flagged each time I picked up the book.  It was too slow moving and too full of explanation and short on action.  It did get better in the middle, after Peter was discovered and the family went on the run again, but I am afraid most young readers might have given up on the book by them.

I also found the idea that a modern listener is named Karl just like the Karli of the past, and that he resembles him in so many other ways, to be one of those coincidental conceits that Morpurgo so often uses and that I don't much care for.  It's a little to pat for my taste.

I did, however, like the metaphor of the compass - the one Peter carries as an airman and how it becomes a red thread through the story as a guide for finding one's way both physically and morally.

As always in a Morpurgo story, An Elephant in the Garden is told in simple, well-crafted prose.  The past and present settings are differentiated using different fonts to avoid any confusion.  And because it is by Michael Morpurgo, you know the end will be OK ever for the most sensitive reader, making it a good introductory narrative for kids who are just beginning to learn about war and its consequences.  And he does make Marlene sound like such a gentle, patient pachyderm, it almost makes you want to get an elephant of your own.  ALMOST being the operative word in that sentence.

Morpurgo has teamed up once again with Michael Foreman, one of my favorite children's book authors/illustrators, and the accompanying black and white ink and wash illustrations he has created for An Elephant in the Garden just complete the story perfectly.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Scholastic/UK has a short but lovely 2 page PFD guide for An Elephant in the Garden that can be downloaded HERE

And if you would like to read more about the real story that inspired Michael Morpurgo to write An Elephant in the Garden, you can find the story HERE

A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo

It is a few years after the war has ended and young Michael (not the author) is growing up in London, living with his French mother Christine.  All he knows about his father is that his name was Roy, he was in the RAF during the war, flying a Spitfire and he had been shot down over the English Channel.

His mother had one of his medals and let Michael keep it in his room.  She told him that his Auntie Snowdrop (really Martha) had the other medals and would be happy to show them to him when they visited her and her sister, Auntie Pish (really Mary), on New Year's Day.  And while Michael didn't really like to visit his Aunties much, he did enjoy seeing Jasper, a little Jack Russell terrier.

The visits were always the same, time after time, but one day, as Michael was coming out of school, he saw his mother waiting for him and knew something was wrong.  She told him that his Auntie Snowdrop had passed away.  At the funeral, his Auntie Pish told him there was a parcel from Auntie Snowdrop for him and she was post it to him right away.

When Michael was 13, five years after his Auntie's death, he was given Jasper to take care of when Auntie Pish couldn't do it anymore.  Eventually she went into a nursing home and, about five years after the death of her sister, she gave Michael the parcel that was meant for him.

In the parcel was a framed photograph of Michael's father, which he set on his desk.  But when Jasper jumped up on the desk, he knocked the photograph over and the glass broke.  Annoyed, Michael picked it all up and discovered a pad of paper behind the picture.  On it his Auntie had written "Who I Am, What I've Done and Who You Are" and it was dated 1950.

As Michael read her words, he discovered who his grandfather, his father, and his Auntie really were and how they were connected to each other.  And what this all means to him.  It was all a family secret that was never even shared with his mother.  His grandfather had served in World War I, and had died saving the lives of other men on the battlefield, but even though he should have gotten a posthumous medal for his bravery, he was never awarded one.

Why did this happen?  Well, Leroy Hamilton was a London orphan, intelligent, a great soccer player and a very congenial person.  He was also black and when he volunteered for military service in World War I, black men did not get awarded medals...until his great great granddaughter decided to fix that wrong.

But where do Auntie Snowdrop and Michael's father Roy fit into all of this?

Using his familiar device of telling a story with a story, Michael Morpurgo has found another unusual story and turned it into a wonderful tale for kids.  A Medal for Leroy is based on the true story of Lieutenant Walter Tull, the only black officer to serve in the British army in WWI, though it only contains aspect of Tull's life, it is not a recounting.

I was a little skeptical about this book before I started reading it because I didn't really care for the last Morpurgo book I read.  But I was pleasantly surprised once I started reading.  A Medal for Leroy is a gentle, poignant story that has some really interesting elements in it.  It is about family, love and being true to yourself, and the emotional harm and unhappiness that family secrets can inflict on everyone involved.  But is it also about triumph and hope and acceptance and I expect you may shed a tear or two before you finish.

This book will be available in the US on January 14, 2014

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an E-ARC received from Net Galley    

Half a Man by Michael Morpurgo

Young Michael had been told by his mother over and over again not to stare at his grandfather whenever he visited his family in London.  But Michael couldn't help it, slyly looking at a grandfather he really doesn't know very well and wondering how his face had gotten so disfigured, how he had lost part of the fingers on one hand and all of them on the other.  His mother doesn't talk about it and his grandfather doesn't talk about much of anything, let alone what happened to him.

Michael's grandfather lives a relatively isolated life on one of the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast, making a living crabbing and lobstering.  When Michael is about 12, he is sent to spend the summer with his grandpa, helping with the fishing, reading, and living a quiet life side by side without electricity, using only a generator that was shut off at night.  But Michael liked it there, it was calming and comforting.

One day, while out in the fishing boat, grandpa suddenly told Michael that the thing he liked about him was that he wasn't afraid to look at his face.  Before long, grandpa is telling Michael about his life and how things came to be as they are.

After marrying his youthful sweetheart, Annie, war broke out and grandpa joined the merchant navy.  One day while crossing the Atlantic in a convoy, his ship was torpedoed several times.  With their ship on fire and sinking, grandpa's friend Jim managed to get both of them off it and into the burning water.  They swam to a lifeboat, and even though there was no room for either of them, grandpa was pulled into it, and Jim stayed in the water, hanging on for as long as he could.

Grandpa woke up in the hospital, with a long recovery ahead of him.  Annie came to visit but grandpa could tell things were different.  When he finally returned to Scilly, they did have a baby girl, but things didn't improve.  Grandpa started drinking, living with so much hate and anger because of the war.  Eventually, Annie left, taking their daughter and never speaking to him again.  Father and daughter were estranged until she was grown and sought him out.  Their relationship was tentative at best, in part because he had always felt like half a man because people only half looked at him, and his own daughter always avoided looking at him.  It was only Michael who wasn't afraid to see his grandpa for who he was, scars and all.

This short story is told in retrospect by a now grown-up Michael.  It feels almost like a chapter book, in part because it is only 64 pages, in part because there are so many illustrations, and in part because it is told so simply, but it is a deceptively complicated story and not for such young readers.  It is really more for middle grade readers.

The ink and screen print illustrations are done in a palette of grays, oranges, blues and yellows, and are as spare as the story is intense.  Most are done from a distance to the subject, and those that are close up show no distinct features.  And distance seems to be an underlying theme of the story.  The story is told from the distance of time, about people who are just so distant from each other emotionally and physically.

I know Michael Morpurgo is a master at telling sad stories, but I found this to be a sadder story than usual, even though the end does bring closure, at the request of Michael's grandpa, bringing together his mother and grandmother, who have been estranged for years.  It really makes you sit back and think.  There was so much sadness because of what the war did to Michael's grandpa and the repercussions that resulted leaving these relatives isolated, alienated, even angry with each other, when really it should have elicited kindness, compassion and love.

For that reason, this is a story that will also have resonance in today's world, where we see so many veteran's coming back from war injured, disfigured and with traumatic brain injury.  It begs the question: how will we treat these veterans, these men and women and their families.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

It is the middle of World War I and on the battlefield, Private Thomas ‘Tommo’ Peaceful, 17. is sitting watch, keeping track of the time on an important newly acquired watch, afraid of falling asleep and missing precious moments of this particular night.  As he sits there, Tommo recalls his life, beginning with his family in the village of Iddesleigh and, later, in the trenches of France.

The Peaceful family live in a house on the estate grounds of the Colonel, a mean local squire  Life wasn’t too bad for the Peaceful family until Mr. Peaceful, an estate forester, is killed by a falling tree, which the young Tommo believes is his fault.  After that, Mrs. Peaceful must go to work in the Colonel’s house in order to be allowed to remain in the cottage they are living in.  Great Aunt Wolf moves in to look after the children - older brothers Charlie and Big Joe, who is disabled, and Tommo.  She is a mean spirited woman runs the house with an iron hand and takes every opportunity to belittle the boys.

Things aren’t much better in school.  Mr. Munnings, one of two teachers, has it out for Charlie, and starts in on Tommo his first day of school.  Big Joe doesn’t go to school but wanders singing Oranges and Lemons, a children’s nursery song, everywhere he goes.  At school, Tommo meets Molly and it is love at first sight for him.

Soon Charlie, Tommo and Molly are inseparable friends, doing everything together, including poaching fish and game from the estate grounds.  Throughout everything, having fun or getting into trouble, Charlie has been there for Tommo, so when he realizes that Charlie and Molly are secretly meeting without him, he feels betrayed, but keeps it to himself.  

Charlie and Molly’s relationship leads to pregnancy and when Molly is sent packing by her parents, she and Charlie are married.  When the war in France intensifies, the Colonel decides if the Peacefuls are to remain in their cottage, Charlie must enlist.  After Tommo, who is too young to enlist, is called a coward by an old woman caught up in the war’s jingoism, he also decides to enlist and the brothers manage to pass themselves off as twins for the recruiter.  

During basic training, they serve under the cruel, sadistic Sergeant “Horrible” Hanley who has it out for both the Peaceful boys from the beginning.  And it is because of Hanley’s viciousness that Tommo is keeping this particular watch.

Generally, when I read books that are a person’s recollections of their life, I feel at though I am being told their story and the storyteller is conscious that they are addressing someone.  With Private Peaceful, I felt as though I (as a reader) were simply privy to Tommo’s private memories.  He wanted to be alone for the night and consciousness that I was there as a listener would have defeated his need to be alone.    

Private Peaceful is a well written novel, but there are some graphic descriptions of trench warfare.  It is written in the plain, straightforward language of a young country boy at that time, such there is a real eloquence to it.  

There are two important issues at the center of Private Peaceful.  The first issue Morpurgo brings to light is that sometimes the enemy is not the fellow facing you across the battlefield in waiting in his trench, but is right there, side by side with you.

The other issue in Private Peaceful is a moral issue that inspired Morpurgo in the first place.  When the Peaceful brothers are finally sent to the front, they find themselves at Ypres, Belgium.  For anyone who has ever seen the gravestone in Flanders Field, you what a particularly horrendous field of carnage it was.  But among the thousands who were shot on the battlefield, are almost 300 graves of soldiers who were shot for cowardice.  These men were give a fast trial, without representation and the without regard to the effects of war on their minds as well as their bodies.  Some of them were still just kids, like Charlie and Tommo.  And, Morpurgo writes in his Postscript, that although most countries have give pardons to there soldiers, Britain has not.    

Private Peaceful is a must read for anyone interested in war literature or in humanity in general.

The Telegraph has an excellent article from 2003 about Morpurgo and Private Peaceful that you can read here.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/4793519/Anthem-for-doomed-youth.html

This book is recommended for readers age 12 and up.

This book was borrowed from the Fordham branch of the NYPL

Private Peaceful is book 2 of my World War I Reading Challenge
Private Peaceful is book 2 of my Historical Fiction Reading Challenge


Private Peaceful
Michael Morpurgo
Scholastic
2004 (2003)
208 Pages

Poppy Field by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Michael Foreman

Today is Veterans' Day in the United States and Remembrance Day for the rest of the world. And while it is important to honor and say thank you to those who serve and have served in the armed forces, today is even more special. It is the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, or World War I as it later came to be called.

No one had ever experienced a war like WWI before. New weapons were developed that had devastating results on both soldiers and civilians. From the air, planes could now drop bombs on battlefields and cities; at sea, submarines could now torpedo battleships and cargo ships carrying food and supplies; and on the battlefield, tanks with machine guns and canons could roll over no man's land and attack their enemies in the trenches, while chemical weapons like chlorine, mustard gas and flamethrowers were also used in trench warfare. It's no wonder so many returned suffering from PTSD.

To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Armistice Day, Michael Morpurgo has written a lovely book that tells a fictionalized story of how and why the poppy have became the flower that symbolizes the sacrifices made by those who have fought in their country's wars.

Young Martens Merkel lives on a farm in Flanders near Ypres in Belgium with his mother and grandfather. The farm, once part of No Man's Land in WWI, is in the middle of a vast poppy field and surrounded by several cemeteries. Sadly, Martens father was killed while plowing one of his fields by an unexploded shell. There is also a part of a poem written on an old wrinkled paper, framed and hanging on the hallway wall in the Merkel home. It is the beginning of a poem and Martens loves to hear his grandfather tell the story connected to that poem.

When Martens' grandfather's mother Marie was an eight year old girl, she used to sell eggs at a field hospital to the English soldiers. In the spring of 1915, the poppies were in bloom and Marie would pick some to give to those who bought her eggs. One morning, there weren't many soldiers to buy eggs, but Marie noticed one sitting nearby, writing in a notebook. Irritated at her for interrupting him, he threw the now scrunched paper he had been writing on away, but he asked Marie if she would place her poppies on the grave of his best friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who had been killed the day before and who loved poppies. The poppies immediately began to blow away, but the soldier didn't seem to mind and began writing again - a poem dedicated to his friend.

Marie's mother read and translated what was on the paper she kept, and the whole family agreed that the words were too precious to throw away. Her father made a frame and hung it on the wall. The

poem is, of course, In Flanders Fields by John McCrea, a Canadian surgeon and Lieutenant-Colonel.

There is much more to the story Martens' grandfather tells, which becomes a nice blending of the fictional Merkel family history and some factual wartime history, including war's aftermath. Michael Morpurgo has a wonderful ability to take real events and write a story around them that works perfectly for young readers, entertaining and informing at that same time. Here, he says in an interview, he wanted kids to understand why it is important to remember those who fought in a long ago war by bringing it into the present, as well as showing the impact war has on civilians. And he has done an outstanding job of that with Poppy Field.

The 100th anniversary of the end of the World War I is perfect timing, since it has been in the news so much this weekend and kids can witness world leaders acknowledging the men and women who served their country, and who gave their lives then, just as they do now.

Be sure to read the Afterword for more information on the history of In Flanders Fields, John McCrea, and how the poppy became the symbol of remembrance.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was purchased from Book Depository for my personal library.

Don't forget in all the commemorations, however, that this is also Veterans' Day in the US and 
remember the thank all veterans for their service. 

In Memoriam

FCP 1955-2001

An Eagle in the Snow by Michael Morpurgo

After spending the night in a shelter, Barney, 10, and his mother return home to find their house on Mulberry Street reduced to rubble, as result of the bombing of Coventry. Even knowing all was lost, Barney tries to look through the remains to find his beloved toy trains, but is stopped by a Civil Defense Warden.

Realizing that all has been lost, Barney's mother decides to relocate to Cornwall, spending the rest of the war living with her sister. Barney's dad is away in the army, stationed in Africa with the Royal Engineers. Taking the 11:50 train to London, mother and son are soon joined in their compartment by a stranger. But almost immediately, Barney realizes that the man looks very familiar. Sure enough, the stranger is none other than the Civil Defense Warden who had carried Barney out of the rubble of his destroyed home. After they start chatting, it turns out the the man had also grown up on Mulberry Street, in the orphanage that used to be there.

Looking out the window, Barney spots a plane in the air, which the stranger immediately realizes is a German Messerschmitt, pushing Barney and his mother to the floor and covering them with his own body. After the train is attacked, the conductor drives it into a tunnel for safety. Suddenly, they are plunged into darkness, and Barney, who has a severe fear of darkness, begins to feel like it is closing in on him.

Coventry

To take Barney's mind off the darkness and pass the time, the stranger starts to tell the story of his life-long friend Billy Byron and their experiences together in World War I. After leaving the orphanage, the two friends had gone to work in a hotel, stoking the boiler there. Not much liking it, they decided to join the British Army and have some adventures. But it wasn't long before the war began and they sent to the front lines to fight. On their way there, Billy saw a little girl sitting by the side of the road, starving and in need of medical care. Picking her up, he carried her all the way to a field hospital against his sergeant's orders. All he knew about her was that her name was Christine, but her face haunted him all through the war.

Billy was a brave soldier, and by the end of the war he had been award a number of medals, including the Victoria Cross for valor in the face of the enemy. But all the killing and wounding of men really got to Billy, so at the end of the war, after the intense Battle of Marcoing, he allowed a German soldier to simply leave and return home to Germany.

Billy also returned home, haunted by the war. He never forgot Christine, and returned to Europe to try to find her. Eventually, he does, and now a grown woman, they two marry and settle down in Coventry. All goes well for them until Barney suddenly recognizes the German soldier he allowed to go free while watching a newsreel about the German Führer Adolf Hitler.

Was it possible that Billy was responsible for Hitler's rise to power and starting the Second World War? Billy needs to know

An Eagle in the Snow is a story that is based on speculation and reality with Morpurgo giving it all his own spin, and a surprise ending. It's a formula that really works well for him. In this story, Billy is based on the real life experiences of a WWI soldier named Henry Tandey, and while there is still a lot of speculation over whether Henry actually spared Hitler's life, it does make for a good novel.

Told in Morpurgo's typical story within a story format, An Eagle in the Snow is actually a little slow in the beginning, but readers who stick with it will be rewarded by the end. It is, however, a short, quick novel and well worth reading. He does go into the fighting that Billy and his friend took part in but it isn't graphic, and kids will most likely pay more attention to Barney's fear of the dark then to the scenes at the front lines.

There is lots of potential for speculation in the novel and in the accounts of Henry Tandy's wartime experience, as well as hypothesizing what one might do in Billy's shoes. Fans of Michael Morpurgo will definitely want to read this new novel, as will young readers who like historical fiction.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an ARC received from the publisher

Below is a painting that is featured in the novel, that hung on Hitler's wall at Berchestgaden, in the Bavarian Alps. Click the link to find out what part it plays in the life of Henry Tandey, Adolf Hitler, and in the novel, Billy Bryon.

Post battle painting by Fortunino Matania 

Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo

It's May 1915 and World War I is in full swing.  On the Scilly Island of Bryher, Alfie Wheatcroft has just played hooky to go fishing with his dad.  One their way home with their catch, Alfie hears a moaning sound coming from the deserted St. Helen's island.  Checking it out, he and his dad discover a scared, starving, shivering young girl clutching a bedraggled teddy bear and wrapped in a blanket with the name Wilhelm embroidered on it.

They decide to take her home for Alfie's mother, Mary Wheatcroft, to nurse back to health.  The girl keep saying Lucy over and over, and when Dr. Crow is called to examine her, it's decided that Lucy must be her name.  Soon she is known all over the island as Lucy Lost.  At first, Lucy refuses to speak and eat, but gradually does take some of the food given her.  She also refuses to leave the room she is put into.  One day, the doctor suggests using music to see if that will help her, bringing over his gramophone and records.  Lucy is drawn to the music, particularly one piece by Mozart, and while the music gets Lucy out of her room, she still doesn't speak.

Flashback to New York City in March 1915.  Merry McIntyre and her mother have been missing her Canadiann father ever since he enlisted and left for the war in Europe.  When they receive a letter saying he has been wounded and is in an English hospital, Mrs. McIntyre decides they will sail to England on the S.S. Lusitania in May despite the danger of German submarines prowling the Atlantic Ocean.  It proves to be a voyage that confines Mrs. McIntyre to the bed with seasickness, while Merry takes the opportunity to get to know the ship and their cabin steward Brandon very well.

Forward flash again to Bryher.  Thanks to the music and Alfie's patience and kindness, Lucy begins to get better daily.  But when school begins again at the end of summer, the teacher, Mr. Beagley, a particularly cruel person, decides Lucy must attend or be reported to the authorities.  And eventually, when word gets out about the German blanket Lucy was found with, the island people turn on her and the Wheatcrofts, believing the are on the side of the Germans and shunning them to the point that life becomes difficult.  When someone paints "Remember the Lusitania" on the Wheatcrofts door, and Mary sees recognition in Lucy's eyes, even this kind, stalwart woman begins to wonder about her.

Astute readers will early on realize the Lucy and Merry McIntyre is the same person, but solving the mystery of her identity is not what is at the heart of this story.  What is at the heart is a wonderful story about home front life and survival during WWI, about love, hate and unusual kindnesses, and about what family really means.

Listen to the Moon is a rich multi-layered novel based on a confluence of actual events, framed by an unnamed future narrator (not future to the reader, however).  The story within the frame is told alternately in the third person from Alfie and Merry/Lucy's perspectives, with additional information from Dr. Crow's journal and Mr. Beagley's school log, all making this a very well-developed, thoroughly intense story.

There is so much history in the novel, so be sure to read the background information to Listen to the Moon for more understanding, especially the part about the S.S. Schiller and why Germans were not allowed to attack the Isles of Scilly in WWI.  The background material is every bit as compelling as Morpurgo's novel.

The Guardian has an interesting pictorial article on how the Lusitania inspired Listen to the Moon HERE

You can find very useful Teacher Resources on Michael Morpurgo's website HERE

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips by Michael Morpurgo

After his grandfather dies, 12 year old Michael, nicknamed Boowie, receives what appears to be a very long letter from his grandmother. She tells him to read all the way through it and no peeking at the end or he will ruin the surprise.

Most of the pages are diary entries by his grandma, Lily Tregenza, when she was a young girl of 11, beginning on September 10, 1943. Lily lives on a farm in Slapton, South Devon with her mother and grandfather. Her dad is fighting in Africa. Lily also has a cat named Tips that she loves very much.

School has just begun, and life is about to change. There are lot more evacuees in Slapton, including Barry Turner, whose dad was killed in the war and who keeps smiling at Lily. The new teacher is a Dutch Jew who escaped Holland with her husband just before the Nazis arrived. Lily doesn’t like her until she hears that Mrs. Blumfeld’s husband has been killed in action. To top it all off, her village is full of American soldiers or gum chewing “ruddy Yanks” as her grandfather refers to them. But at least she still has beloved Tips.

On November 13, 1943, everyone in Slapton is summoned to a meeting at the church. There, they are told that they must all leave the area for a while because the beach and village are needed for the soldiers to practice landings at sea for the coming invasion of France. Everything of value must be removed, including livestock, because the area, which will be surrounded by barbed wire, will be very dangerous.

Lily’s grandfather flatly refuses to go. He hates the war, having served in the trenches of World War I and never got over what he had witnessed then. Even after most of the people are gone, he refuses to go. When Barry learns he can’t move with the family he is living with and ends up moving in with Lily’s family. Then Barry falls in love with the farm and his presence and enthusiasm seem to rejuvenate Lily’s grandfather.

But it is Lily’s teacher, Mrs. Blumfeld, who finally convinces him to make the move, explaining to him how this move will help end the war. Lily, meantime, has made friends with two American soldiers, Adolphus T. Madison, called Adie, and his best friend Harry. They are both young black men from Atlanta, Georgia, the first blacks that Lily has ever seen and she is enchanted by their open friendliness.

Moving day finally comes and trouble starts when Lily can’t find Tips. She searches everywhere, but no Tips. The next day, she goes back and searches again. Adie and Harry also lend a hand by bringing in reinforcements to help look to no avail. Finally, the area is closed off with Tips is still missing. Lily then starts sneaking through the barbed wire to return to the farm to find her beloved cat. On one of her searches, Lily is caught and taken to the officer in charge. He has Adie and Harry take her back home and Adie makes her promise not to return to the farm, that they will continue looking for Tips, but that she will probably find her way to Lily herself. Despite her promise, Lily tries to find Tips one more time. This time, Barry follows her and after they get caught in some very scary, explosive maneuvers, Lily decides to give up her search for Tips.

Finally, in March 1944, Adie and Harry show up and, sure enough, they have found Tips. But she only stays put a few days and she is gone again. Tips had been found in the hotel, and shortly after her second disappearance, the hotel is destroyed in an explosion. Lily loses all hope that she will ever see Tips again.

On April 7, 1944 Adie and Harry bring over hot dogs, ketchup and soda pop. They all have a wonderful time at what becomes known as the Great Hot Dog Feast. But on May 1st Lily is told that Harry has been killed. During some maneuvers, they were in ships waiting to do practice landings. The ships were torpedoed by German E-boats and hundreds of soldiers were killed. This is also the day that Lily realizes that she loves Adie more than anyone or anything and would forever.

Eventually Tips does find her way home again and Lily changes her name to Adolphus Tips, in honor of Adie. Tips lives for three years after that. Lily’s dad comes home after the war, Barry returns to his mother in London and things pretty much go back to normal.

But this isn’t the end of the story, far from it. At this point, I can only tell you what Boowie’s grandma told him:

The surprise comes right at the very end. So don’t cheat, Boowie. Don’t look at the end. Let it be a surprise for you - as it still is for me.

And, boy, was it a surprise!

Michael Morpurgo is a master storyteller. This was such a simple story, and yet so compelling. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. It is a story is about love, friendship, helping each other and keeping promises. Lily is a typical kid, complaining to her diary about giving up her favorite candy for the war, sometimes forgetting to worry about her dad, giving her teacher a hard time ‘just because.’ But she is also kind, courageous and an adventurer, as her grandson already knows from experience. The diary dates were selected for a reason, beginning with the arrival of American soldiers and, with the exception of two later October entries, ending on June 6, 1944, D-day, the day Adie left Slapton with the US Army for the invasion of France.

The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips was awarded the Sheffield Children’s Book Award in 2006.

This book is recommended for readers age 9-12.
This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL.

The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips offers a wonderful window into the lives of what it may have been like for the people who were asked to give up everything and disrupt their lives for the war. The evacuation of Slapton was a real event, as was the torpedoing of the ships waiting to being the practice landings.

For more information on the the events that this novel centers on, see The dister that may have saved D-Day

Monument to the 3,000 people asked to evacuate their homes and farms for the 15,000 American soldiers to practice landings for D-Day from
Devon County Council 















This is book 5 of my British Books Challenge hosted by The Bookette

The Christmas Truce of 1914 - a picture book roundup

(This post gets filed under the rubric Better Late Than Never. My Kiddo arrived home at 2:00 AM Christmas morning, we've been catching up, and I forgot to set this up to publish automatically.)

The story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 is an interesting one. The very fact that ordinary soldiers fraternized with each other on the battlefield, even for one day, was considered to be an act of treason by both the British and German governments. But when you realize that war is a political act, and soldiers are the powerless who must carry out the commands of their superior officers unquestioningly, the story about Christmas Truce becomes all the more meaningful. In his Author’s Note to Shooting at the Stars, John Hendrix writes that the truce “stands as a lasting example of ordinary men doing the extraordinary…Armed with carols and Christmas trees, individual men threw away their weapons and walked toward the enemy with a desperate hunger for peace.” I think that the hunger for peace is a true today and it was in 1914.

The Best Christmas Present in the World by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Michael Foreman

2004, 2014, Egmont UK, 48 pages, age 7+

Accompanied by Michael Foreman’s beautiful, touching illustrations, in this short story turned picture book, the past and present meet in the form of a letter. It begins in the present day with a purchase of a much desired roll-top desk in need of restoring due to fire damage. The unnamed narrator decides to begin work on it on Christmas Eve to escape overly excited relatives for a while. Pulling out the drawers, he discovers a letter written on December 26, 1914 and addressed to Mrs. Jim Macpherson. In the letter, a soldier describes how British and German soldiers came together on that frosty Christmas morning, sharing food and drink from each other’s Christmas packages, and playing a game of football. For Captain Jim Macpherson, the day was spent getting to know Hans Wolf from Dusseldorf, who spoke perfect English and whose favorite book was Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. At the end of the day, the two parted friends. On Christmas day, our narrator decides to visit the address on the letter, an old house that had had a fire. A neighbor tells him the woman, Mrs. Macpherson, now about 101 years old, had survived and was in a nursing home, where the narrator next goes. Yes, he finds her, she recognizes the letter, but the ending though sad, it so poignant. But, you can read it for yourself. The story was published in the Guardian in 2003 and you can find it here:

 The Best Christmas Present in the World

Shooting at the Stars: The Christmas Truce of 1914 by written and illustrated John Hendrix

2014, Abrams BFYR, 40 pages, age 7+

After a short introduction about World War I, Hendrix begins his story with a young freckle-face soldier named Charlie writing a letter home to his mother from France, and telling her about the cold, wet, muddy experience of living in trenches with rats vying for their rations of cold beans, all nicely captured in an accompanying illustration. Since Christmas has arrived, hope that the war will end by then has faded, but, he writes, something extraordinary does happen. German soldiers begin singing Silent Night and all along their trench line little lit up Christmas trees appear. In the morning, British and German soldiers meet on the battlefield, shake hands and begin helping each other bury their dead soldiers. Pictures are taken, uniform buttons exchanged, food shared, and football played, and the inevitable question of soldiers was asked: why can’t we just have peace. And the answer comes from Charlie’s superior Major Walter Watts who orders them back to their trenches and to being fighting again. Their splendid day over, Charlie writes his mother that he suspects they will spend the rest of the night shooting at the stars instead of their enemy. Hendrix did the illustrations for this story in an acrylic wash of blues, yellows and greens, reflecting the cold landscape and the warmth of the men meeting momentarily as friends on No Man’s Land.

The Christmas Truce: The Place Where Peace Was Found by Hilary Robinson, illustrated by Martin Impey

2014, Strauss House Productions, 36 pages, age 7+

The moon is shining brightly on Christmas Eve, 1914, when Christmas lights appear atop the German trenches and two German soldiers, Karl and Lars, begin to sing Sille Nacht on one side of No Man’s Land. They are soon answered by Ray and Ben, best friends and British soldiers on the other side, singing Silent Night. Slowly the two armies, enemies the day before, leave the trenches, meet on the battlefield, and shake hands as church bells are heard chiming. Pretty soon, a soccer ball is brought out and a friendly Christmas morning game is played. The soldiers are sure that their example of peace on earth, goodwill towards all will end the war soon, but that was not to be. This is a poignant retelling of the Christmas Truce story, a cumulative tale where the rhyme repeats and builds up using the previous lines as the story moves forward (think This is the House that Jack Built), and each final line reminds us that No Man’s Land, in the midst of war, was a place where peace was found, if only for one day and night. Along with the text, the illustrations, set in a palette of wintery blues, capture this unusual pause in the fighting - the barbed wire, the youthfulness of the soldiers, a debris strewn No Man’s Land. Though the faces of the soldiers are a bit playful, they carry a definite feeling of grace to this most graceful of moments. 

And the Soldiers Sang by J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Gary Kelley

2011, 2014 Creative Paperbacks, 32 pages, age 8+

Answering the King’s call for men to enlist once war is declared in 1914, a young unnamed Welshman from Cardiff joins the British army, and chronicles his experiences in a journal his father's give him. He begins with crossing the English Channel in September, riding in a cattle car crammed with soldiers from France to the Western Front in Belgium. Fighting the Germans across no man’s land, the weather gets colder and wetter, the trenches are filled with water and rats, the noise of machine gun fire is deafening, and the young Welshman suffers from with the agony of trench foot. But then, on Christmas Eve, lights on trees are seen across a No Man’s Land, littered with debris and dead soldiers, and suddenly a German soldier begins to sing Stille Nacht and is answered by the young Welshman singing First Noel. And so the Christmas Truce of 1914 begins. Soldiers on both sides meet, help bury the dead, share food and photographs of family, and the young Welshman is convinced that the war will end soon, how could it not after what he just experienced, and what a story to tell his grandchildren, but alas, that is not to be. The British Major orders that soldiers back into the trenches and the war continued. It was Lewis’s hope that readers would see “the helplessness of war, the futility of it’ and that in war, it is always the soldier, on the front lines, who pays the price of fighting. This is an incredible book - emotional, moving, frustrating, and ultimately almost devastating, but a tale that could easily reverberate in today’s world. The illustrations are dark, in a palette of browns and blacks, reflecting the utter grimness of war. This is not a happy Christmas Truce story, but one that will definitely impact readers.

I've already reviewed two excellent books about the Christmas Eve Truce of 1914 which you may be interested in reading about:

Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy is the first truce story I read.  Murphy's excellent nonfiction account gives a history leading up to the start of World War I, what life in the trenches was like and, of course, the Christmas truce.

Christmas Truce by Arron Shepard is the second truce story I read.  This is a fictional account of the Christmas Eve truce told by a soldier in a letter home to his sister.  There been some false beliefs and misconceptions surrounding this night when fighting ceased and goodwill took over.

There are countless articles about the real Christmas Truce of 1914. Here is one I recommend:

WWI Christmas truce: haunting recollections of a short-lived peace

My Top Blogs Posts (are not what I would have expected)

I was reading Cecelia's Top Ten Blogging Confessions over at her blog The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia when something she wrote made me stop and wonder.  I know Cecelia participates in the  meme Weekly Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads and one of her blogging confessions is that 4 recipe posts are among her top posts.  I enjoy reading Cecelia's book reviews, but I have to confess, she has posted some pretty good recipes and I know because I have tried some of them.  So thank you for both, Cecelia.

But all this did make me wonder what my most popular posts are.  It's not something I usually pay much attention to when I look at my stats.  So this morning I looked and, boy, was I surprised.  Here they are:

1- Going Solo by Roald Dahl, posted September 13, 2010
Roald Dahl recounts his life in Africa as an RAF pilot during the early years of the Second World War.   I was still a novice blogger when I posted this, and it shows.

2- Black History Month - The Double V Campaign: African Americans and World War II by Michael L. Cooper, posted February 7, 2011
This is a very interesting, excellently written book about the Double V Campaign, in which African American men and women were fighting for victory for their country and for equality in the Armed Services.

3- My Brother's Shadow by Monika Schroder, posted January 3, 2012
This is a story about a family at the end of World War I living in Berlin, Germany and their struggles, hardships and their participation in the charged political events of the time.

4- The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, posted July 18, 2011
The story of three children trying to survive while hiding from the Nazis in the rubble of war torn Warsaw, Poland after their parents are arrested and the strange boy with a silver sword connected to their missing parents.

5- I Survived #9: I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944 by Lauren Tarshis, posted January 31, 2014
When they accidentally leave the Jewish ghetto Esties, Poland, to pick some raspberries, brother and sister Max and Zena are caught, but manage to escape their Nazi capture and decide to keep running.

6- The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall, posted June 15, 2011
When Chas and his friends find a wounded German airman, they befriend him, then force him to repair the machine gun that was attached to his plane.  

7- The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips by Michael Morpurgo, posted April 6, 2011
A young boy learns about his grandmother's life in England during WWII when British and American soldiers took over her town to practice for D-Day and about the cat she loved named Tips.

8- Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer with Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck, posted December 13, 2010
Follows the lives of two Germans in WWII and afterwards.  One is an Aryan member of the Hitler Youth who completely believed in Hitler, the other a Jewish woman who escapes to Holland, only to be sent to Auschwitz.  This is a fascinating nonfiction book.

9- Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr, posted August 6, 2013
This most famous book recounts the life of Sadako Sasaki as she struggles with A-Bomb disease ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima.  Believing that if she folded 1,000 origami cranes, she thought she would be granted her wish to live.  Unfortunately that didn't happen, but Sadako sparked a peace movement among the children of the world, who still send thousands of paper cranes to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park every year to honor Sakako and the others who perished as a result of the atomic bomb.

10- Weekend Cooking #10: Victory through Carrots, posted May 14, 2011
This was one of my favorite posts to do.  Who knew there was such a thing as a World Carrot Museum?  Well there is and you can visit it online.  This is the museum that inspired my Favorite Funky Museums board on Pinterest.

What are your top ten posts?  

Mister Doctor: Janusz Korczak & The Orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto by Irène Cohen-Janca, art by Maurizio A.C. Quarello

Janusz Korczak was a well-known, well-respected children's pediatrician in Poland in the early part of the 1900s.  Among his many accomplishments, he had founded an orphanage to care for some of Warsaw's young Jewish orphans. He loved children and would often regale his charges with stories he made up, including the now classic tale of King Matt the First, as well as looking after their health and cheering them up with their needed it.  And the children loved him back, affectionately calling him Mister Doctor.

On November 29, 1940, all the orphans living in the big orphanage at 92 Krochmalha Street in Warsaw, Poland were ordered to leave by the Nazis.  Accompanied by Mister Doctor and his assistant Madam Stefa, all of the children walked to the ghetto that would be their new home for a while carrying their meager belongings, softly singing, and the flag of King Matt the First.

Their new home is small, located within a two block radius, surrounded by barbed wire and armed watchman, their living quarters are cramped and dirty.  When their wagon full of potatoes were confiscated by the Nazis, Mister Doctor put on his WWI uniform and went to Gestapo headquarters, where he was laughed at, ridiculed, beaten and temporarily arrested.

Life in the ghetto grew more and more crowded as more Jews were brought in, food became scarcer and scarcer, with men, women and children dying in the streets everyday from starvation and disease.  Finally, in August 1942, the children were ordered to the train station and from there to a concentration camp and death.  But Mister Doctor was offered his freedom, after all, he was a famous doctor.  Instead, he refused and choose to accompany his children on this final journey.

The story Mister Doctor is told by a young boy named Simon to a younger, newly arrived orphan named Mietek.  Simon describes in detail how the orphanage was run, how the children were educated and how Mister Doctor took such special care of all of them.  At the same time, Simon is talking about past, he also gives detailed information to the reader about what is going on in their present situation.  Cohen-Janca has really captured the sense of longing and nostalgia in Simon's voice when he talks about life in the orphanage before the Nazis invaded Poland, and the fear and apprehension he feels about what is to come.

The story told here is a fictional reimagining of what happened to Dr. Janusz Korczak and the children in his care, but based on the true story of what happened to them during the Holocaust.  Pay particular attention to the last three paragraphs of this book and ask yourself who wrote them and why?

Like Michael Morpurgo's Half A Man, this book also looks like a chapter book with only 68 pages a simple narrative style and many illustrations, but it is also deceptively complicated and really for a middle grade reader.

The realistic black and white illustrations set against a marbled peach background are a precise reflection of the words that Cohen-Janca has written, and give the reader a real-to-life sense of the children, the doctor and their lives from 1940 to 1942.  Little touches, like the figure of Puss in Boots leaping over the barbed-wire fence of the ghetto as Simon talks about how that cat and his courageous deeds always gave the orphans courage.  But there is a subtext that says the Nazis can take away housing, food, dignity, but not the stories that means so much and help the get kids through very difficult times.

This is a powerfully poignant story that shouldn't be missed.  Additionally, at the end of Mister Doctor is information about the real Janusz Korczak, whose real name was Henryk Goldszmit, followed by a briefbut useful list of Further Reading and Resources, Children's Books by Janusz Korczak, Resources for Parents and Teachers and Related Links.

Mister Doctor was translated by Paula Ayer

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an E-ARC received from NetGalley

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

O to be in England…now.

The Imperial War Museum is running an exhibition until October 2011 called "Once Upon A Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children." It spotlights five works altogether: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden, The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall, The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, and Little Soldier by Bernard Ashley.

One of the books used for this exhibit is the classic story The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier. It is the story of the Balicki family, Joseph and his Swiss wife Margrit and his daughter Ruth, 13, and Bronia, 3, and son, Edek, 11. In 1940, they are living in a Warsaw suburb in Poland during the Nazi occupation of that country, where Joseph is the headmaster in a primary school.

One day while teaching, Joseph turns a picture of Hitler so it faced the wall. His action is reported to the Nazi authorities by a student. Joseph is arrested and sent to a prison camp in Zakyna. He spends two years in the prison camp, ill but determined to escape, which he finally does manage to accomplish. Joseph spends 4½ weeks walking back to Warsaw, but when he arrives he discovers that his house has been destroyed, his wife has been arrested and sent to a work camp in Germany, and his children have survived but are no where to be found.

At the ruins of his home, Joseph finds a silver letter opener in the shape of a small sword. He also meets a young boy there carrying a wood box. Eventually he befriends the boy, Jan, who shows Joseph how and where to safely jump a train to Switzerland. Before he leaves, he gives the silver sword/letter opener to Jan and asks him to tell his children, should he run into them, that their father has gone to their grandparents in Switzerland to find their mother, and to follow him there. Jan puts the sword in his wooden box for safekeeping.

When their mother was arrested, Edek had secretly shot at one of the officers with a rifle, hitting him in the arm. Scared, the children decided to run away that night, over the rooftops of the adjoining buildings and just in the nick of time. As the children are running away, their house explodes – Nazi retaliation for the rifle shot. The children hide in a wood, surviving on the kindness of peasants and on Edek’s ability to smuggle. But one day Edek is caught and arrested. They hear nothing about him for two years, continuing to survive in the woods in summer and in Warsaw in winter.

In the summer of 1944, Ruth, now 15, and Bronia, now 5, hear that the Russians are pushing westward and are not far from Warsaw. This rumor turns out to be true and by January 1945, the Nazis are gone from Warsaw, but because of the fighting to regain it, so is Warsaw. At their former home, they find a very ill Jan. They nurse him back to health and are helped to survive by a kind Russian soldier, who also traces the whereabouts of Edek in Posen. But when they arrived in Posen, they learned Edek has TB and is in isolation. At the makeshift hospital for TB patients, they are told that he has just run away. Tired and hungry, they go to a refugee camp for food and rest, but when a brawl breaks out, the hand the pulls Ruth away from the fray is that of Edek. Together, the four children begin their journey to Switzerland in earnest by first taking a train to Berlin. By now, it is May, 1945 and the war over in Europe.

Their journey to Switzerland takes Ruth, Edek, Bronia and Jan isn’t easy. Edek’s TB gets progressively worse. Then Edek and Jan are caught stealing from the American troops in Germany, and Jan must do a week of detention. The children are taken in and cared for by a kindly farmer and his wife, but when they hear that all Polish people will be sent back to Poland, they are forced to make a middle of the night escape in some old canoes the farmer owns. All through their journey, the silver sword has been an inspiration to carry on and find their parents. But in their hasty escape, the silver sword gets left behind at the farm. It was their talisman and as long as they had it, they had good luck overcoming the obstacles they faced. Now it seems that their luck has run out. The canoe trip, which should have been easy, is not without hazards: Ruth and Bronia are shot at and one of the other canoes is destroyed. Later, they face a terrible storm while crossing Lake Constance, located in both Germany and Switzerland. Will they ever be reunited with their parents without the sword?

At the heart of this novel stands is the idea of family. The Balicki’s are is a warm, loving, supportive family, reason enough to motivate the children to find their parents. And the reason that the homeless, parentless Jan decides to stick with them. Like many people who lived through the war, the children find strength in themselves to endure, discovering that they can deal with all kinds of difficulties and hardships.

Throughout the novel, Serraillier juxtaposes the hatred and destructive nature of Nazism and the people who supported it against the kind and helpful people who rejected it, people who were willing to take a chance, even risking of arrest and death, to help the children

The Silver Sword was published in the United States under the name Escape from Warsaw, and is still available from Scholastic by that name. I prefer the original name, The Silver Sword since it has so much meaning the central characters in the story.

Although the novel was published in 1956, it remains a very exciting adventure for young readers and I highly recommend it.

The book is recommended from readers aged 12 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Juvenile Collection of the Hunter College Library.

Zoe at Playing by the Book has written an in-depth two part review with pictures of the exhibit "Once Upon A Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children." Be sure to take a look at it.


And if you are in London and get to the exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, you might want to also see the Winston Churchill’s Britain at War Experience. Not as fancy as the IWM, but a real experience. Simply take the Northern line from Elephant and Castle to London Bridge. The museum is located at 64-66 Tooley Street.
It is one among many of my favorite places in London (along with Pollock’s Toy Museum.)

This is book 10 of my British Books Challenge hosted by The Bookette

This is book 11 of my Forgotten Treasures Challenge hosted by Retroreduxs Reviews