Keep Calm and Carry On, Children by Sharon K. Mayhew

It's September 7, 1940 and the sound of the air raid sirens has just begun throughout London. For Joyce Munsey, 11, and her younger sister Gina, 6, that means getting out of their beds and heading out to the backyard and the makeshift, shelter that their dad had dug there, as bombs begin to fall. By September 10th, after witnessing the destruction the bombs had brought into their lives and neighborhood, and after the loss of two neighbors, Joyce's parent decide it time for their daughters to join the next trainload of school children being evacuated to the countryside. On September 11, 1940, Joyce and Gina, unable to even wash up after the previous night's bombing, board a train at Euston Station heading who knows where with a number of other children.



On the journey, the two sisters meet Sam Purdy, 11, and Molly Neal, 12, and after hours and hours of riding, the four of them disembark in a place called Leek. As people look over the evacuees, Sam is chosen quickly by an elderly man who claims to need someone who can help him now that his boys are away fighting. Molly is next, chosen by an elderly lady who likes her humor and cheekiness. And just as Joyce and Gina begin getting worried they would be left behind, a woman and her daughter Phyllis Woods, 10, decide to take in the sisters.



Joyce and Gina's placement works out very nicely, and Phyllis proves to be an instant friend. After a few days, they decide to call on Sam and Molly, to see if they can come out and play for a while. But when they find out he is living with a Mr. Badderly, Phyllis recognizes the name and tells Joyce he isn't a very nice person.



Sure enough, he has Sam working hard in his victory garden and won't let him leave until Joyce, Phyllis, and later Molly help Sam finish his chores. When they finally get away from Mr. Badderly, Sam tells them how badly he is being treated, even forced to sleep in the cellar. But when Sam, Molly, Joyce, and Phyllis discover a hut full of items that are now being rationed, they realize these are things being sold on the black market. I think no one will be surprised to discover who the ringleader of the black marketeers is. But what can a group a kids do about these ruthless crooks?



Keep Calm and Carry On, Children is an interesting story, with lots of everyday details about the early days of the Blitz, and the fear, worry, and trepidation that children must have felt at being sent to strangers in the countryside and away from their family. Many of the evacuees in the book arrived in the countryside in dirty clothes and not have washed, because as the bombing in London increased, the water and gas lines were damaged. That is something I never encountered in a WWII novel about evacuees before. Also, it was so surprising to learn that Joyce and Gina had never used a toothbrush until living with the Woods family. I wonder how common that might have been. The Munsey family was poor in London, and at times, Joyce feels so embarrassment because of it, but was never made to feel bad by Phyllis or her mother.



It took some time to get to the part about the black market and Mr. Badderly's mistreatment of Sam, which sadly really did happen to some of evacuees. I think some of the early details could have been edited out without spoiling the story. Also there were mistakes in the ARC I read, which will hopefully be fixed in the final copy, but it was nothing that would ruin the basic story.



Mayhew's story was inspired by her grandfather's family, when his parents took in two evacuees from London during the war. And one final thing: though she used the slogan in her title, to her credit, Mayhew didn't use it in the story. Keep Calm and Carry On was only to be used in case of invasion, and that never happened.



Keep Calm and Carry On, Children is a novel that should interest young readers interested in history, especially WWII history.



This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

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True Brit: Beatrice - 1940 (Book 1 in the Far and Away trilogy) by Rosemary Zibart

It's September 1940, the Blitz is already in full swing, and the last thing 12-year-old Beatrice Sims wants is to be sent away to Santa Fe, New Mexico for safety while her family, parents and older brother, stay behind in London. An upper middle class girl, Beatrice travels in first-class comfort, first by train, then by ship across the Atlantic Ocean, and finally, by train across the United States from New York to New Mexico.



Before she leaves London, her father suggests Beatrice think of her trip as an adventure and herself as an explorer, giving her a red leather notebook to fill with all the different and interesting things she will see and do and experience while away. Her mother, however, is convinced that the war would be over by Christmas and Beatrice would come home.



Arriving in Lamy, New Mexico, Beatrice finds herself alone in a small train station, with only a sleeping cowboy on a bench. Eventually, Clem Pope arrives with two chickens and a beat up truck named Maude. Clem is the local practical nurse, the only one around now that the world was at war and everyone expected the US would be in it soon enough. Her house is comfortable but nothing like Beatrice is accustomed to.



The first day of school, Beatrice meets Esteban, son of Delores, who helps Clem in the house, and Arabella, who introduces her to her new surroundings as only a 12-year-old would know them. But soon enough, Beatrice discovers that Esteban and his friends think she is faceta, a spoiled little Princess. Beatrice is upset by this nickname, especially because she really likes Esteban. Hurt that the kids think about her that way, she also discovers and can't understand that many Americans don't want to get involved in the war in Europe or help England in its fight against the Nazis.



But when Beatrice decides the change her reputation, she discovers it isn't as easy as she would have liked. After a few unfortunate incidents, things aren't looking good. It will take one big life-or-death incident to really turn things around for Beatrice, not just how others see her, but, more importantly, how she begins to see herself.



True Brit is the first book in Rosemary Zibart's trilogy about the different experiences of young people from war-torn countries during WWII, now living on the American home front. It is an engaging story, one I found I couldn't put down. And I thought Zibart really did a great job in depicting Beatrice's culture shock as she begins to adjust to her new surroundings. I could understand how Beatrice felt since I was once a New York City girl who found myself living in a desert area for four years.



Zibart also looks at the class differences between Beatrice and Arabella and most of the kids they are in school with, kids who are native, biracial, and poor by comparison. Yet, neither one is presented as better than the other, but accepted for who they are as people. In that regard, readers see how the stereotype ideas Beatrice arrives in New Mexico with about the land, culture and people are dispelled as she gets to know and understand her new surroundings better. Beatrice does records her adventures in the red notebook her father gave and these entries give the reader more insight and information than even Beatrice's first-person narration does.



Of course, True Brit are some humorous moments - her first hot dog with mustard and relish, her first milkshake, and American slang - is all A-okay. But it is the eye-opening experiences that she has that really make a difference. Beatrice arrived in New Mexico, very much a fish out of water, a self-involved, pampered and privileged girl who expected to be taken care of by servants much the way her mother is. And yet, despite her flaws, I found Beatrice to be a likable character who really grows and comes appreciate her new, temporary (?) home.



Astute readers who are also fans of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis will like the scene on the train station where Beatrice sees and envies a girl named Lucy and her siblings getting on another train to stay with great-uncle in the country. Interestingly, Beatrice recalls that scene later in the book as she wishes she could be a comfortable as Clem is in her new setting, and envying those four children again.



True Brit is an interesting, informative book that gives readers another detailed look at the life of a young girl in WWII who finds herself in a totally different land and culture than what she is accustomed to.



You can download an Activity and Discussion Guide courtesy of the publisher, Kinkajou Press, HERE



This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was sent to me by the publisher, Kinkajou Press

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Re-reading Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

I decided to re-read Blackout and All Clear not long ago. I read them back in 2010, and while I don't usually re-read books, I did these because I always felt that I had read them too quickly. And the fact is I loved them as much the second time around as I did the first. Then I re-read my review and decided, 9 years after I wrote it, to repost it. This is what I wrote on November 17, 2010:

"I have just finished reading Blackout and All Clear and find myself wishing that Connie Willis could have kept going. After reading these two books totaling 1,168 pages, I find I have become quite attached to the characters and had a hard time saying goodbye when I came to the end. They are just that good!

The books are based on a simple enough premise. In 2060 Oxford, history is studied by traveling back in time to observe, collect data and interpret events firsthand under the tutelage of Mr. Dunworthy, the history professor in charge of time travel. The story centers on three students interested in different aspects of World War II. Michael Davies, disguised as Mike Davis who wants to go to Dover as an American war correspondent to observe the heroism of the ordinary people who rescued British soldiers from Dunkirk; Merope Ward becomes Eileen O’Reilly, working as a servant to Lady Caroline Denewell in her manor at Backbury, Warwickshire in order to observe evacuees from London; and Polly Churchill becomes Polly Sebastian, a shop girl by day working in the fictitious department store Townsend Brothers on Oxford Street, who wants to observe how Londoners coped during the Blitz.



In Blackout and All Clear, Willis makes it clear that there are certain cardinal rules of time travel. First, the traveler may not do anything to alter a past event. But that was supposed to have been taken care of so that it couldn’t happen. In addition, an historian is not allowed to travel to a divergence point, a critical point in history that can be changed by the presence of the historian. Nor can a predetermined drop site open if there is a “contemp” nearby who might see what is going on. Furthermore, once they have arrived at their destination, the historian is required to return to 2060 Oxford and report in. If they don’t do this, a retrieval team is sent to bring them back to Oxford. One other thing, time traveling historians are not supposed to have contact with each other while in the past.



That being said, Mike ends up in Dunkirk, saving a life and Eileen is prevented from returning to Oxford at the end of her stay by an outbreak of measles among the evacuees. Both ultimately travel to London, seeking Polly, hoping to use her drop to get back to 2060, but Polly’s drop has been compromised by a bomb and has stopped working. These extended stays do not result in the arrival of retrieval teams; but in much more complex adventures and worries. Have they altered the future unintentionally? Or unalterably? And if so, what does that mean for the future? And will the historians ever get back to 2060 Oxford?



In addition to Mike, Polly and Eileen, Willis has drawn some interesting supporting characters in Blackout and All Clear, all very different from each other and all of whom I found myself caring about. There is Sir Godfrey Kingsman, the well known actor who is part of the entourage in Polly’s bomb shelter, though he did get on my nerves with his constant quoting of Shakespeare, yet he was still endearing. He always referred to Polly as Viola from Twelfth Night because of the way she arrived at his bomb shelter her first night, and she was going by the last name Sebastian, the name of Viola’s twin brother, something to keep in mind as you read. And Colin Templer, 17 and besotted with love for Polly and who had promised to rescue her if anything went wrong. Colin wants to go to the Crusades so he can use the paradox of time travel to close the four year age difference between himself and Polly. Eileen’s life was plagued by Alf and Binnie Hodbin, brother and sister urchins evacuated from London to Backbury, pranksters and troublemakers extraordinaire. Mike had Commander Harold, elderly captain of the Lady Jane who unofficially went across the English Channel to participate in the evacuation of soldiers from Dunkirk and changed the course of Mike’s time travel.



Connie Willis has done a brilliant job writing Blackout and All Clear, even though I know I will probably have to reread both books again to really appreciate them [yes, that's exactly what happened]. When I first read Blackout, I didn’t pay close attention to the dates at the beginning of each chapter, so sometimes they were a little confusing. I found myself preoccupied with questions about why I was suddenly in 1944 or 1945 and who were Mary Kent and Ernest Worthing and how did this connect to Mike, Polly and Eileen?  Blackout sets up all the questions and All Clear answers them.



Throughout both novels, the three main characters are confused by what has happened to them, and the chaos of the period, such as not knowing when or where bombs may fall, adding to their sense of helplessness once Polly's knowledge of when and where bombs will fall is exhausted. As in the real war, anger, anxiety, confusion, fear, frustration and helplessness are exactly the array of emotions that the reader experiences along with Mike, Eileen and Polly. Yet, all is not doom and gloom. Willis balances these with instances of hope, courage, selflessness and heroism. She also injects some very comical scenes into the story, such as an angry bull and the deployment of rubber tanks in a muddy, foggy pasture to fool the Luftwaffe, or the constant antics of the Hodbins. And of course, there is the dry wit of the British and their ‘carry on’ attitude after a blitz attack. I really like the fact that Willis keeps the story focused on the plight of the stranded historians, rather than jarring the reader by going back and forth between them and Oxford 2060.



Blackout and All Clear are both chock full of action, information, comedy, tragedy and everything else that goes into making a great story. They are not really meant for YA readers, yet they are perfectly suitable for high school kids, and even some younger ones. So without reservation, I would definitely recommend Blackout and All Clear to readers in their teens and to everyone else. It is a wonderful a tale about survival and heroism."


These books are recommended for readers age 13+

These books were purchased for my personal library.



Willis described the blitz and the bombs that hit Oxford Street, where Polly worked, in amazingly realistic detail.  Check out the following for an online exhibition of the West End at War including photos and maps of the blitz in that area, the same area that plays a large part in Blackout and All Clear

 http://www.westendatwar.org.uk/index.aspx



The following has online information about the Docklands and East End during the war, another area highlighted by Connie Willis;

http://www.museumindocklands.org.uk/English/EventsExhibitions/Themes/DocklandsWar/

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My Best Friend: The Evacuee by Sally Morgan, illustrated by Gareth Conway

Young readers can follow two friends as they experience the first year and a half of World War II in completely different circumstances in this epistolary chapter book and discover just what it was like for kids at that time.



Londoners Harriet Hale, 11, and Teddy (Edward) Wilson, 10, have always been best friends and comic book lovers. In fact, they have even been working on their own comic book for a while now, working on it inside the Anderson shelter in Harriet's backyard. But Teddy has a secret and Harriet doesn't find out what it is until she receives a letter on 1st August 1940 and learns that her best friend has been evacuated to America. What a blow! Not only that, but he took Harriet's newest Beano comic book with him.



Meanwhile, Harriet is left in London, and although most of the other kids there have been evacuated to the countryside, Harriet is staying home with her mum. Soon, Harriet and Teddy begin corresponding with each other and their letter exchange is how readers learn what is going on in their lives.



Remaining in London means that Harriet must contend with the fear that Hitler is getting ready to invade the England. And that means that he has already begun to heavily boob London, even Buckingham Palace takes a hit. But for Harriet, the scariest is when the Underground shelter she and her mum are in takes a direct hit, and people begin stampeding out of the shelter, scaring her enough that for a while she refuses to shelter in the Underground whenever the air raid sirens go off.



For Teddy, life in Dayton, Ohio with the Mayer family isn't very eventful, but there is plenty to eat and no fear of invasion or bombs. There is also baseball, and while it's not cricket, it's still kind of fun for him. But even though the Mayer family really likes him, Teddy can't help but feel homesick. At first he believed he would be home by Christmas, but when that didn't happen the time stretched out longer and longer, until finally in 1945, he can return home.



The aren't many chapter books written about World War II, so I'm always curious to read one when I find it. I found My Best Friend: The Evacuee to be chock full of factual information and presented in such a way that an 11 year old would experience what is happening around them. Beside that direct hit on the Underground station where Harriet was, readers will learn how Teddy was able to be evacuated to America, and why that program had to be stopped when one of the ships was torpedoed in the Atlantic by a German submarine.



Sally Morgan has really captured the intensity of Harriet's fear and Teddy's homesickness, and has packed this story with historical facts that really make it an interesting work. It is a story that was written to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII this year, and it is an excellent work for introducing young readers to this dark period on two different home fronts, without graphic descriptions. I like that Morgan pays homage to the women who did so much for the war effort, include Harriet's Aunt Lucy, who loves puzzles and is clearly working at code breaking at Bletchley, and her sister who may or may not be a land girl, but is definitely working on a farm.



There is lots of back matter, including a WWII timeline, and brief bios of relevant people from history who are mentioned in this book. 



My Best Friend: The Evacuee is an excellent addition to WWII books for young readers.



This book is recommended for 7+

This book was sent to me by the author, Sally Morgan

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Lifeboat 12 by Susan Hood

In the summer of 1940, as fear of a German invasion grew, the British government initiated a program called the Children's Overseas Reception Board, or CORB, which purpose was to evacuate British children from England and send them by ship to one of their (then) Dominion countries.



Lifeboat 12 follows the experience of one of the children chosen to be sent to Canada, a boy named Kenneth Sparks, 13, of Wembley in London, the son of working class parents. Kenneth, however, doesn't want to go, thinking his stepmum had finally found a way to be rid of him, even if she did buy him a very good, expensive overcoat to take with him. He was thrilled about getting such a nice coat, even if it was second hand. After all, by the summer of 1940, Ken was used to everything being second hand, makeshift or rationed because of the war. But he still wasn't happy about going to Canada.



Once the Blitz begins, and night after night is spent in a shelter, Ken quickly begins to look forward to leaving England. And he does finally leave in a convoy on Friday, September 13th, sailing on a luxury ocean lined called the City of Benares. And it is luxurious for the evacuees, who are fed wonderful and plentiful food including seconds, provided with brand new toys and games, and clean soft beds, even better than what Ken had at home. Ken makes friends with some of the other boys and spends his time exploring the ship with them. Only the constant lifeboat drills in case of an attack and the convey escorting the ship remind the kids of war they left behind.



That is until September 17th, their fourth day at sea, when a German submarine torpedoes the ship, causing severe damage. Ken heads to his assigned Lifeboat 8, but in all the confusion, he remembers he left his coat behind, the one his stepmum bought and admonished him to take care of and not to lose. Rushing back after retrieving his coat, Ken discovers Lifeboat 8 has left and he ends up squeezing into Lifeboat 12, along with 5 other boys, and 40 adults. 



Surrounded by bodies and overturned lifeboats, the survivors in Lifeboat 12 watch as the City of Benares sinks, and wonder when and if they will be rescued. With enough food and water for only eight days, Lifeboat 12 drifts in the rough seas of the open ocean for eight days.



Lifeboat 12 is based on the true story of the torpedoing and sinking of the City of Benares, and while it is a fictionalized telling, it is based on the account of the Kenneth Sparks and other survivors, whom Susan Hood interviewed for this free verse novel (knowing Ken survived isn't a spoiler).



Hood spent a lot of time interviewing Ken just before he passed away and she has really captured his 13 year old self. He is both is appealing and believable, a friendly, lively, bright boy who notices everything around him and is curious about it all. His anger at his family for sending him away feels genuine, as does his fear - going back for his coat so his stepmum won't be angry at him, sitting in an overcrowded lifeboat wondering if he would be rescued - and the disappointment that his parents couldn't see him off when he left, and then having travel alone to London when he returns to England. I liked how Hood has Ken mention in passing that planes are his hobby, rather than making a big deal about it, and he knows them all, knowledge that ultimately saved the people in Lifeboat 12.



Lifeboat 12 is a coming of age story that most readers will find hard to put down. It is divided into three sections - Escape, Afloat, and Rescue, and each section gives a day by day account of what Ken was experiencing. And when you are finished reading Ken's fictionalized story, there is plenty of back matter to explore, including facts about lifeboat 12, information on the people who survived, plenty of photographs, and books for further investigating, interesting websites, and videos, and information about the crewmen, particularly the Asian crew.



Lifeboat 12 is a testament to courage, a gripping, tension filled novel that will have you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end.



This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

This photo in the back matter really caught my eye. I had done some research years ago on overseas evacuations of British children, including the City of Benares. Sure enough, I had a copy of this picture from The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post dated September 28, 1940, along with this account by Kenneth Sparks. So I can honestly say that Susan Hood really has brought Ken's to life for today's readers.

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Letters from the Lighthouse by Emma Carroll

I was inspired to read this novel when I read about it on Mr. Ripley’s Enchanted Books 

last June. So I ordered a copy from The Book Depository and began reading the day it arrived and finished it in one sitting. Needless to say, it is a really good novel.

It’s February 1941, and even though it isn't usual, older sister Sukie Bradshaw has decided to take siblings Olive, 12, and Cliff, 8, to see a movie after tea. But no sooner do they get through the newsreel but the air raid siren goes off. To make matters worse, Sukie has disappeared. Leaving her brother at the Underground shelter, Olive goes in search of Sukie, and just as she reaches her sister, another bomb falls way too close to them. When Olive wakes up in hospital, she learns that Sukie is still  missing, and that she and younger brother Cliff are going to be evacuated to Budmouth Point, on the Devon coast, for safety. 

Olive has already lost her dad to the war when his plane was shot down, and can’t bear that her sister may be gone too. But how can she figure out where Sukie is and who the man she met just before that bomb fell is if she’s in Devon? Still, as soon as she is able, Olive and Cliff are sent to live with Queenie, the sister of their London neighbor, and Sukie's supposed pen-pal. 

Things don’t work out at Queenie’s, who is always busy doing all kinds of work in the cellar, and using Olive to make deliveries for her around the village. It gets especially hairy after Olive is forced to share her room with Esther Jenkins, an evacuee with whom Olive already has a contentious relationship. Olive and Cliff soon find themselves living with Ephraim, the lighthouse keeper. Life is better at the lighthouse, where Ephraim insists on doing everything, where the food is better and Cliff even has a dog to pal around with. 

It doesn’t take long for Olive to realize that there’s an awful lot of activity on the lighthouse radio, much more that seems right. Meanwhile, Olive is also trying to work out the coded message she found in the coat Sukie was wearing the night she disappeared. The longer Olive is lives in Budmouth Point, the more she realizes that Sukie’s disappearance just might have something to do with the clandestine activity she's noticed among some of the village residents…but what could it possibly be?



Letters from the Lighthouse is an exciting adventure and Olive is very appealing, lively narrator. There was something about her story that reminded me so much of the books I read about kids in WWII that were written during the war. The thing I noticed in those books was the ability to carry on despite the uncertainly of the future. One always hopes for the best, and that is the feeling that Carroll captured writing about Olive's search for Sukie - she is so convinced her sister is okay somewhere in the world and she needed to figure out where.  



As Olive's story unfolds, Carroll also provides the reader with a window though which to see and understand just what it means to be a child and live in a country at war and under siege, realistically depicting the fears and the privations, as well as the importance of family. the value of friends and neighbors, and need to learn trust and tolerance. Heading each chapter with expressions, warnings, and advice that were common during the war also helps give the novel a sense of authenticity.



As much as I enjoyed Letters from the Lighthouse, I did have a few plot points that bothered me - like how did Olive end up with the coat Sukie was wearing when the bomb fell in London, and how what happened to Sukie actually happened. They were explainable, but not to my satisfaction. BUT, these were not game changers for me, and if you like historical fiction about WWII, they shouldn't be for you either. 



This book is recommended for readers age 9+

This book was purchased for my personal library

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