A little while ago, I set Small a project – to explore the Second World War primarily through fiction. To get him started, I dug around our shelves and our many secondhand bookshops, and I found a few good titles. The first one he started was Carrie’s War.
Oddly, I’d not actually read this one. Small read it today, in a hurry to get back to screens 😉 and then declared it boring. I suppose it is very different to the sort of thing he reads for himself, but to be sure, I picked it up and read it this evening.
If I compare it to the sort of thing Small chooses – Wimpy Kid, Alex Rider, the pacing is completely different. He complained that nothing really happened – for all it’s set during the war, the action is all at a personal level. Carrie’s war is a story of families and strangers, and how they are brought together and torn apart.
I can quite see why Small didn’t go for it. He didn’t notice the undercurrents of conversations, the small happiness and sadness of day to day life. He also didn’t really notice any of the details like children sliding on trays down the slag heap, or parents dying in accidents in the mine. He doesn’t read a book at that kind of level, and that’s not so surprising, given that we’ve not talked about books the way I do with Big.
I’m hoping to change that now, by starting to read alongside him. I listened to the first 6 Alex Riders on trips to and from Scotland over the years, but I’m a bit behind with them, and I’ve never read any Wimpy Kid. We did try out having a family book club a little while ago, and read Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Wonder. Wonder was a rather more popular choice – Small still hasn’t really forgiven me for Boy. There have been other books he has enjoyed – perhaps I’ll like the Pendragon Girl series, as he certainly did.
When I suggested the world war II project to him, my ulterior motives were to broaden his general knowledge, and his reading horizons. Now my motivation is to share the fictional journey with him, which I think is a rather better starting point. I daresay he’ll learn stuff along the way, but it probably won’t be the things I might expect, and I’m sure that I’ll learn a few things too.
Do I recommend Carrie’s War? On my admittedly quick read tonight, perhaps it has a stronger appeal to adults in some ways, although a quick search online tells me it’s often used at KS2 – you can get resource books (like Carrie’s War: KS2 (Read & Respond)
I’d love to hear the opinion of someone who lived through those experiences on it.
Tomorrow I might build a page with a booklist on it, we’ve a few titles kicking about already. Do feel free to drop suggestions in the comments through, always looking for more books to read 🙂
I loved Carrie’s War – I saw the tv dramatisation in the 1970s and also read thebook. I think I still have it. Have you seen the Jack Rosenthl play The Evacuees. You can probably find it online – very funny and sad at the same time.
“Once Upon A Wartime” exhibition made us read more than Carrie’s War. http://oldmanorborn.org.uk/?p=6730
Can’t see if it’s still out there in some outlying museum but it was excellent.
The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier was our favourite.
From books for keeps listed the 5 books and themes.
“The difficulty for the organizers of Once Upon A Wartime will surely have lain in choosing which of many exceptional books to pick. They’ve opted to focus on five novels, four that are indubitably modern classics and one that speaks to young readers of contemporary children’s experience. Each book in turn comes to represent a generic theme in war fiction: Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse exemplifies loyalty while Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden is used to explore separation; The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall denotes excitement, and Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword survival. Identity is the final topic, examined in Little Soldier by Bernard Ashley which features a child soldier from East Africa who comes to London where he encounters a different, but related, kind of warfare amongst the gangs on his estate.”
That’s a good list, thanks
the title Carries War sounds terribly familiar. i have a feeling I must have read it at some point years ago. I rather like the idea of a family book club, how did that work, did you all take turns in reading the book, all read it out loud to each other or have several copies of the same book?