Cover: Levente Szabo
‘People passing might help a couple of cute kittens, but do you really think they’ll get close enough to rescue three kids, two dogs, a donkey in a straw hat and a python?’ (p 152)
Follow that?
We already had quite a number of children's books set in WWII, amongst them some of the very finest examples of literature for this readership*, but last year Phil Earle still managed to add another highly distinguished title to this group. His When the Sky Falls is an original and moving London Blitz tale of a boy’s involvement with a gorilla left behind in an abandoned zoo. However, this book is powerful, and indeed so popular, than it necessarily begs the question of how successfully the author was going to be able to follow it.
The answer proves to be quite brilliantly
What no gorilla?
Although the domestic animals that feature centrally in While the Storm Rages do not have quite the originality or cachet of a mountain gorilla (with the possible exception of a python), intense commitment to pets is actually closer to many children’s own experience. So a story about youngsters trying desperately to save their own pets from being unnecessarily put down is bound to capture the attention from the start, not to say pull mercilessly at the heart stings. And this new book certainly does all of that.
Although set in 1949, and precipitated specifically by events of that year, this one is really not so much a story about the war as it is, at least to start with, more of a children’s adventure (with animals). However it doesn’t altogether stay that way, for, like it’s characters it grows in richness and power. Phil Earle is above everything a consummate storyteller. However what he offers is more than just entertainment, he has much to say too.
Just an adventure?
Three children want desperately to save their adored pets, following a government directive that all animals that cannot be moved out of London should be put down. They hatch an impulsive, well intentioned, but half-baked plan, to take a dilapidated boat and try to sail from their Wapping home up the Thames to Windsor, where they believe they will find sanctuary for the animals. Initially there is plenty of incident and amusement with the incongruous crew of inexperienced sailors and the small menagerie they manage to collect on the way. Characters, human and animal, and their interactions are vividly conjured; it is all hugely engaging and the pages turn rapidly.
However, whilst in some ways , it may indeed be an adventure, it is soon no jolly jaunt. This adventure costs. In real terms. In hunger. In pain. In fear. In very real danger. And the children learn. They learn about life and the value of life. They learn about cost, about death. They learn about each other and, most of all, they learn about themselves. And, as the war intrudes more upon the story, just as it does upon the lives of those in Britain at that time, they and we learn more about some of its dire consequences. This book turns out to be both powerful and poignant,
All’s well?
The tale ends well, as indeed a story for this age group should. But, although we have a good number of children’s books about WWII evacuees, this one brings home some of the realities, emotional as well as practical, more potently than many.
It is another fine work from a fine author and not to be missed.
*Note: See my post ‘World War II’ on FromTheStoryChair.blogspot.com