Emily Bearn
EMILY BEARN chooses some summer reading
This has been a bumper year for historical children’s fiction, with the 100th anniversary of the Armistice inspiring some wonderful new stories set during the two world wars. The
Goose Road (Walker, 384pp, £7.99, Oldie price £7.15 inc p&p), a debut novel by Rowena House, begins in 1916, and tells the story of a young French girl’s flight across rural France with her flock of Toulouse geese, led by her beloved gander Napoleon. (‘I wish he could fly just this once, and wheel freely in the glittering heavens … But he’s too heavy for that.’) This is a beautifully imagined story, which captures the horror of war within the framework of a fairytale plot.
WW2, meanwhile, is the backdrop to Flamingo Boy (Harper Collins, 288pp, £12.99, Oldie price £10.34 inc p&p) by the ever-industrious Michael Morpurgo. Set in the South of France, the novel tells the story of an autistic, animal-loving French boy who lives on his parents’ farm in the Camargue, and forms an unlikely bond with a Nazi sergeant. This is a heartfelt and simply written story that will delight fans of Morpurgo. In
The Buried Crown (Chicken House, 320pp, £6.99, Oldie price £4.98 inc p&p), Ally Sherrick blends history with fantasy to tell the story of a London evacuee who finds himself resisting a Nazi plot to steal a magical Anglo-saxon crown. This is an engrossing adventure in which, as in all the best historical novels, the focus is on the fiction, rather than the facts. The Children of Willesden Lane (Franklin Watts, 240pp, £7.99, Oldie price £5.81 inc p&p) by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen was first published in America in 2002, and is now finally available in a British edition. The book recounts the adventures of Golabek’s Jewish mother, a child pianist who escaped from Austria to England on the Kindertransport, and ended up at the Willesden Lane orphanage. Golabek is a wonderful writer, whose story should whet children’s appetite for WW2 classics such as Carrie’s War and Goodnight Mister Tom. For younger readers, Ruby in
the Ruins (Walker, 32pp, £12.99, Oldie price £9.98 inc p&p) by Shirley Hughes tells the story of a young girl in London, who is reunited with her soldier father at the end of WW2. Hughes’s familiar drawings brilliantly capture the gaiety of VE day street parties (‘the delicious sandwiches, cake and even chocolate biscuits!’), against the eerie aftermath of the Blitz. At ninety, Hughes is the grande dame of the British picture book – and this touching story shows her formula working at its best. The Day War
Came by Nicola Davies (Walker, 32pp, £10) focuses on more recent conflict, telling the haunting story of a nameless girl who is forced to flee when her hometown is ravaged by war. The deceptively simple narrative combined with Rebecca Cobb’s evocative illustrations make this a useful tool for explaining the refugee crisis to younger readers.
On a more tranquil note, Plantopedia: A Celebration of Nature’s Greatest Show-offs (Quartokids, 192pp, £14.99, Oldie price £10.97 inc p&p) by Adrienne Barman is a humorous and sumptuously illustrated anthology of plants that will enchant children and adults alike. There is even a separate chapter for oldies – including the Douglas Fir tree, which, according to the author, ‘lives for up to 6,000 years’.