Henderson’s Boys: The Escape by Robert Muchamore

Robert Muchamore is the author of the very popular CHERUB series.  These are series books about the orphaned minors who are members of CHERUB, which stands for Charles Henderson’s Espionage Research Unit B, and modern day spies working with British Security Service.  

The Henderson’s Boys series is a prequel to the CHERUB series and takes place during World War II.  It begins as people all over Paris are fleeing south before the arrival of Hitler’s Army, with one exception.  Marc Kilgour, 12, is an orphan who has just run away from the abusive orphanage he has lived his entire life in.  He arrives in Paris and finds what looked to be a very comfortable, abandoned house to live in.  That is until the Nazis show up and torture him for information about the real occupant of the house - Charles Henderson 

At the same time, Paul, 11, and Rosie Clarke, 13, are pulled out of school by their father, Digby Clarke, a traveling salesman for the Imperial Wireless Company.  They are loaded into his Citroën along with stacks of papers and head south to Bordeaux to try to return to England.  On the way, the town they stop in is bombed by Nazi planes and just before he dies, Clarke tells the kids they must find Charles Henderson.

After the Nazis leave, Henderson returns home, finds Marc and after some very exciting adventures in Paris, these two also hit the road looking for Clarke and his children before the Nazis can find them and the papers Clarke has in his car.  

The papers at the center of this story are the blueprints for a miniature transceiver designed by a French Jew named Luc Mannstein.  France and Britain were both a little wishy-washy about acquiring the plans even though the transceiver would have been a real boon in the war because of it portability.  The Nazis had a great deal of interest in it and promised safety in Poland if Mannstein would supply the blueprints to them.  But, Clarke now has the blueprints, so there is a pressing need for him to get out of France.  

Henderson’s Boys: The Escape takes place over a short but crucial period of time during the fall of France.  Part One covers June 5, 1940 to June 6, 1940 and Part Two covers June 14, 1940 to June 15, 1940.  And France has been turned into a large, chaotic country for everyone, but especially for people who don’t know each other to find each other - Will the Clark kids and Henderson meet up?  And what becomes of Marc?  

Henderson’s Boys: The Escape is a brilliantly written, graphically depicted, gritty, action-packed novel and no one is more surprised that I liked than I am.  I don’t usually like these kinds of stories, and yet, Muchamore’s novel held me spellbound.   It truly spares no punches, is at time brutal, has mild language and sexual references, and lots of violence.  It is not for the fainthearted, yet it really is no worst than many of the other  popular YA novels kids read.  

Curious?  You can read the first two chapters and find out more about the Henderson Boys series here.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+ 

This book was purchased for my personal library

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine

This week I am waiting for two books, both of which are the last volumes in a trilogy:

The FitzOsbornes at War finishes the tale of Sophie FitzOsborne and the Royal family of Montmaray exiled to England after the Nazis attacked their island and bombed their castle.  Told through journal entries, Sophie is a keen, witty observer of what goes on around her and there is plenty of social, political and familial intrigue to record.

The Australian edition of The FitzOsbornes at War was available as of April 2, 2012.  The American edition will be available October 9, 2012.

Oh well, this will give me time to reread
The Brief History of Montmaray and The FitzOsbornes in Exile (my reviews)

If you like novels like I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, the FitzOsbornes are sure to please you.

The second book I am waiting for is Becoming Clementine by Jennifer Niven.  This continues the adventures of Velva Jean Hart.   Growing up Appalachian-born Velva Jean Hart faced all kinds of hardships and sorrows with the help of singing, the thing she loves to do best.  Her teenage marriage to a revival preacher didn't work out,  but Velva Jean gained some freedom when she learned to drive.  She decided to follow her dream of singing at the Grand Ole Opry and  drives herself to Tennessee and the next thing she knows, she is flying for her country at war.

Becoming Clementine will be available on September 25, 2012.

Find my review of Velva Jean Learns to Fly here.

Children's Book Week 2012

Today marks the start of Children's Book Week.  This year's wonderful poster is by David Wiesner depicting a cast of favorite children's book characters. The following is a post from the archives of The Children's War about some of the past posters created for this special annual event.

Be sure to visit the Children's Book Week website for participatory events around the country, to find the winners of the Children's Choice Book Awards and to download a free bookmark.







The following was originally posted on May 5, 2011:
Books, especially for young readers, have always been considered to be a weapon during wars because of the influence they can have on the reader. This was as true for the Allied Powers as much as it was for the Axis Powers during World War II. Despite paper shortages everywhere, a good number of children’s books were still written and published between 1939 and 1945.

Children’s Book Week, sponsored by the Children’s Book Council, has been celebrating books and reading and encouraging youthful readers since 1919. Each year the Council commissions a poster by a well-known illustrator of children’s books for the purpose of commemorating this week.

75 Years of Children’s Book Week Posters contains the first 69 posters for Children’s Book Week. This is a book well worth close examination if you are a reader who really appreciates the work of each illustrator in the books you read. According to the publisher’s description of the book, these posters are not only first rate illustrations, but the also reflect the history, social climate and wider concerns of the country at the time each was created.

This made me think of one of my favorite quotes about children’s books by A.S.W. Rosenbach, who was a famous rare book seller and collector of children’s book. In 1933, in the introduction to his own book Early American Children’s Books, Rosenbach wrote:

“…more than any other class of literature, [children’s books] reflect the minds of the generation that produced them. Hence no better guide to the history and development of any country can be found than its juvenile literature.” (pg xxvii)

I think about this quote each time I read a kidlit book.

Since this is Children’s Book Week at the Children’s Book Council, I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the posters that were created for it during World War II.

If you are ever in the Philadelphia ares, be sure to visit the kid friendly Rosenbach Museum and Library or visit online at http://www.rosenbach.org/

Movie Matinee #1 - Journey for Margaret

Based on a 1941 novel by William Lindsay White, Journey for Margaret tells the story of American journalist John Davies and his wife Nora, a very happy, in-love couple.  They have just arrived in London from France in 1940 and the Davies' are expecting their first baby.

John wants Nora to return to the US, but she wants to stay by his side, despite the Blitz.  But after a bomb hits the hotel she is in, Nora loses the baby and the doctor tells John she is no longer able to have children.

Nora leaves the hospital a bitter, detached woman and leaves for the US a few days later.  John remains in London to report on the blitz, but the quality of his reporting has decidedly lost its edge.  One night during an air raid, John witnesses a mother carrying her dead daughter, believing she is only asleep and later helps rescuers pull a three year old boy out of the rubble, during which he absently pockets the boy's toy lamb.  John Davies get mad and gets his journalistic edge back.

His next assignment is a home for children orphaned by the Blitz.  There he runs into the little boy he helped save.  The boy, whose name is Peter, immediately attaches himself to John and "adopts" him after John returns his lamb.

Before John leaves the home, a little girl is brought by a woman who had adopted her after her parents were killed by bombs.  The little girl, Margaret, was too hard to handle.  For one thing, she carries the shell casing of a magnesium bomb around her neck, and she constantly is wiping her eyes.  Why? Watch the clip -

Margaret also attaches herself to and "adopts" John Davies, setting up a very funny sibling rivalry between Peter and herself.  This turns to sad poignancy, however, when John takes them for a visit to meet people who are willing to adopt them and he must enter and exit the house with both children clinging to his legs.

It isn't long before John decides to adopt them and return to the US.  When his wife receives his letter about this plan, she has a bit of a breakdown but emerges from it her old self, happily agreeing to the adoption.

But of course, there is a SNAFU - the plane they are planning to take is completely booked.  John convinces the airline to permit him to use his baggage allowance for the kids, but they are over the weight limit.  So it is decided he will take Margaret, and Peter, who regresses to his old shell-shocked behavior, is sent to live with the people he had visited earlier.

Can John manage to finally get Peter on the plane?

This movie, while at time overly sentimental, is actually a pretty good film.  It depicts the way people dealt with the Blitz - guests bedding down in the hotel shelter or in its one save corridor, the loss of a child or parent(s), and of course the fires, the rubble of everyday life and the people who worked though these conditions even as the bombs continued to fall to save lives..   But the film's most redeeming quality is the picture it paints of the effect the war had on young children - the fear of the sky causing children to walk around always looking up, or the little girl who screams reliving what happened to her.  In the 1942 movie review of Journey for Margaret, the critic wrote "As Director Van Dyke and his authors have made a film of childhood as if they knew that all the heartbreak lay in childhood's...inability to speak and tell its wounds."

Journey for Margaret is rated 4 hankerchiefs. 

Journey for Margaret is sometimes shown TMC, and can be rented from various online sources, but I borrowed it through interlibrary loan.

Now (Book #3 in the Felix and Zelda Family of Books) by Morris Gleitzman

‘Once I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad. Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house. Once I made a Nazi with a toothache laugh. My name is Felix. This is my story.'

‘Then I had a plan for me and Zelda.  Pretend to be someone else.  Find new parents.  Be safe forever.  Then the Nazis came.’

‘Once I didn’t know about my grandfather Felix’s scary childhood.  

Then I found out what the Nazis did to his best friend Zelda.

Now I understand why Felix does the things he does.  At  least he’s got me.  My name is Zelda too.  This is our story.’

As you can see, Now continues the story of Felix begun in Once and Then.  And true to the meaning of the word, Now takes place in the present.  Felix, that charming 10 year old we last saw curled up in a hiding hole to avoid capture by the Nazis, is about to turn 80 years old. He is living in Australia, has had an eminent career as a physician, was married, is now separated from his wife, but on friendly terms, and has one son.  His son and daughter-in-law, also physicians, are off in Africa, helping sick children in Darfur and so Felix’s 11 year old granddaughter, Zelda, has come to stay with him in his somewhat isolated home.

Felix is a sad, but understanding grandfather.  He doesn’t even get mad at Zelda when he learns she has taken the locket, his most precious possession that had belonged to the first Zelda, the spunky 6 year old who was fleeing the Nazis with him.  He is especially not mad after she explains that she thought it would make her brave, but he does guess she is being bullied.  Zelda, as the new kid in school, immediately finds herself confronted by bullies and devises a number of ways to avoid and hide from them - shades of her grandfather here.

At the same time, though, Zelda also feels she must deal with her grandfather’s sadness.  To cheer him up, she plans a surprise birthday picnic tea for him, attaching hundreds of thank you notes from patients to a tree, and lighting some candles, despite the no fire ban.  The entire state of Victoria, Australia was a tinder box because of an intense heatwave.  So naturally, when Josh, a boy in her class and the asthmatic brother of her main tormentor, shows up Zelda accidentally sets the letters on fire, when she pushes him away.  But later when she hears the bush fires that are raging nearby, Zelda is afraid that she has caused them with the burning thank-yous.  

So far their area has not been in danger, but then, the day after the picnic tea fiasco,  while in town, they hear that the wind has changed direction.  Zelda and Felix race home to save the house and Felix’s dog, Jumble, only to find themselves forced to find safety in a hiding hole while the fire rages about them.  

Felix, despite all he has accomplished, has never really come to terms with original Zelda’s death and his failure to protect and save her.  That is a heavy burden to carry around for almost 70 years.  But now he finds himself confronted by another conflagration and a chance to protect and save another girl named Zelda who also means the world to him.  It seems Felix has come full circle - but will he and Zelda both survive this time?

In books 1 and 2, Once and Then, Gleitzman gave the reader a pretty good look at what life was life under the Nazis, the level of cruelty people can be capable of and the level of kindness, too.  But the scars left by the Holocaust on those who survived it must be so unimaginably painful, one wonders how any healing can happen.  But healing is what  Felix needs to do in Now and so, for that matter, does granddaughter Zelda, who feels she can never to good enough to live up the idealized image of her namesake. 

Gleitzman has managed to pull this trilogy completely together, yet, interestingly enough, each novel can even stand on it own.  So, if you have any interest at all in WWII literature, this is a trilogy not to be missed.

Well, I say trilogy very tongue in cheek.  I thought Once, Then and Now would be a trilogy, but maybe , maybe not.  Time will tell.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+

This book was obtained from the publisher and will be available in the US June 5, 2012.

Be sure to visit Morris Gleitzman to read about the real life stories that influences Felix's story.

There is an online teacher’s guide for Now, but I am including the link to all three guides for your convenience:

Once

Then 

Now

FYI: the bush fires in the novel is based on a real event. The bush fires that began on Saturday, February 7, 2009 have come to be known as the Black Saturday Bushfire.  You can read about them here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires