Lily Tregenza’s diary entries provide an engaging glimpse of the changes wrought upon her family farm and small village on the Devon coast during the months leading up to D-Day. Her father is off repairing engines in the African desert, her new classmate Barry is an evacuee from London, the village is full of Yankee soldiers and her cat, Tips, keeps disappearing. Most dramatically, the villages and farms are evacuated as the Allies take over the beaches to practice in preparation for landing in France. Morpurgo’s voice for 12-year-old Lily is clear and believable. A framing story for Lily’s journal—that she, in her 60s, sent the pages about these months in 1943 and 1944 to her 12-year-old grandson—gives a sweet closing to Lily’s account of her friendship with two kind American soldiers. Readers drawn to the wonderful green eyes of the cat on the cover may find their disappointment that this isn’t really a cat story assuaged by the considerable charm of Lily’s narrative. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-439-79661-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
Lewis packs a lot of action into this short novel and plenty of changes into her hero’s young life. Morgy has just moved from California to Massachusetts, where he gets lost on the way home after the first day of school, is repeatedly picked on by an older bully, finds out his mother is pregnant with twins, tries to learn to play hockey, and survives a chimney fire, a blizzard, and a blackout. In between trials, he makes new friends and writes to old ones, is visited by his aunt, and helps raise money for new equipment for the school playground. This lighthearted novel is filled with incident and warmth, nicely matched in tone by Chesworth’s black-and-white illustrations. Especially pleasing is the easy way the members of his family and his new friend Byron’s family come together during the storm, spend Thanksgiving together on the spur of the moment, and thereafter are naturally integrated into one another’s lives. (Fiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-92284-4
Page Count: 74
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A song made famous by a host of singers has become a picture book that well suits the lyric’s eloquent plea for universal peace and understanding. Based on a utopian vision of what the world could and should be like, the intricate folk-art drawings show the earth, first from a great distance, then increasingly closer and more intimately. As the text shifts from describing scenes of harmony and plenty to more ominous images of war and want, the illustrations depict troubled faces in the windows of homes and military activity in the background. The spare text and powerful images work in accord to provide educators and parents with a book that can be used to stimulate discussion of many different issues. (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-45872-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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