Cover: Daniela Terrazzini
‘I am grateful for . . life every single day, knowing how many people would have loved my opportunities and never had them.’ (p 287)
WWII remembered
The period of our history involving the Second World War has attracted some of our very finest children’s writers, and there are many wonderful novels covering both children’s lives on the home front, and the truly appalling treatment of Jewish children by the Nazis. They are all hugely important books in terms of keeping awareness alive for children born into a world where this dark time is rapidly passing from living memory, even for their oldest relatives. However, the number of evocative and deeply moving examples of such books already available begs the question of whether the children’s canon really needs yet another one covering the same ground. The answer must be a resounding yes when it is as fine as the upcoming Anna at War.
WWII relived
This is one of the most accessible novels on this theme that I know, and yet it achieves this in the context of an involving and deeply affecting story. It takes considerable writing skill to say so much through such a relatively simply and straightforward narrative. In this, it harks back to something of the quality of Nina Bawden’s wonderful Carrie’s War. Only Emma Carroll’s and Lucy Strange’s recent books exploring the same period have had much the same qualities. Yet the more direct focus here on the human abomination that was the treatment Jews by the Nazis makes Anna at War even more powerful. Anna’s story is also an exploration of the experience of immigrants and of the consequences of prejudice. As such, it could not be more relevant and important for today’s children.
For me, only Judith Kerr’s wonderful When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is more potent, and that comes largely from the fact that it springs from first-hand experience. But, even written over seventy years after the event, Anna at War too has its own very special qualities. Helen Peters draws on the experiences of real children who came to England on the Kindertransport. She has a wonderful ability to put herself inside the mind of Anna, and to take her readers there too. Through the voice of her young protagonist, she continually conjures the details of experience, yet expresses them in ways that seems genuinely that of the child. She vividly places a young girl’s everyday concerns into the context of momentous, and deeply troubling, times. Overall, it is the pure power of this author’s storytelling that makes the book so effective, direct, yet skilfully constructed to engage utterly. This is the past relived, and hence made relivable. Sometimes it is heart-wrenching , but it is also humanising; as uplifting in its resilience and love of life as it is paining in its cruelty and loss. Without ever preaching, it both enlightens and enriches.
WWII honoured
To bring this period of history into the easy access of today’s 9-12 year olds, to make it an engrossing read, with elements of exciting adventure, without in any way exploiting history for cheap entertainment, is a fine achievement. Helen Peters also helps contemporary readers to relate this period to their own by a framing narrative that brings Ann’s experiences closer to the generation of her grandchildren. It all makes Anna at War highly recommendable, and the book could well, I hope, lead young readers into exploration of some of the many other exceedingly fine works of children’s literature that deal with the same period and its issues. (See my post from January of this year.)
Many have hoped that all the sacrifices of those years in the mid twentieth century would achieve the final demise of the despicable actions and attitudes on which the monster of warfare feeds. Subsequent events have shown that, tragically, this has not been the case. However, books such as this could well help a new generation of children grow up to build the better world for which so many gave so much.