I - along with my fellow members of Crowvus - are very excited about our new release on 16th September. We fell in love with this story for a number of different reasons, and one of the key ones for me was the role of history. Of course, when you have a story about the governing and governance of time, there is going to be some element of the past, but the way in which Elizabeth McKay so casually and seamlessly interweaves the past with the present is both clever and effective. Finding our own place in time is not always easy, and neither is finding a place in our current time for the past. Discussing an historical fiction book recently over the weekend's breakfast, we were led into the confusing cycle of how fine the line is between pioneering characters and utterly unbelievable ones. The conversation actually began because of a discussion into our family tree and a look at how the role of registry offices allowed for a step away from the power of the church. In our increasingly ...
Today's #HistFicThursdays blog comes from Judith, who is reviewing Tom Palmer's fabulous book, Angel of Grasmere. Read on, to see what she thought...
Picture from Tom's website, here:
The Angel of Grasmere: From Dunkirk to Grasmere is a
middle-grade novel by Tom Palmer.
I came to read this book in a surprising sort of way. Having
just taken up a post as an English teacher at the local High School, I was
informed that each class has a session in the library every three weeks. The
kind but terrifyingly organised librarian told me that my third-years had
missed their last library session, so she had kindly slotted on into my first
week with them. This was an absolute godsend as, last thing on a Thursday, it
was lovely for me and the rest of the class to just sit with a book.
It being November, there was a Book Week Scotland display up
in the library, full of books which involved the theme of Hope. One of them, The
Angel of Grasmere: From Dunkirk to Grasmere, caught my eye with its
attractive cover designed by Tom Clohosy Cole. I picked the book up and
began to read. The following week, I had two more sessions in the library and
read a little more, finally finishing it the following week with another class.
The story has a dual narrative, with one part following a
young girl called Tarn, and the other a stranger whose name we don’t learn
until later. Tarn is a young girl living in Grasmere whose brother, Joss, was
killed during the evacuation from Dunkirk. Initially introduced as simply being
furious that she – as a girl – is not allowed admittance to Joss’s memorial
service in the church, her motivations and true dreams become clearer
throughout the book.
Despite the wartime setting, there is very little indication
that the Germans are the antagonists of the story. An evacuee from Manchester is
aware that his family are under threat and that bombs have been dropped in the
vicinity of his parents’ house. At one point, the characters watch the bombing
of Barrow from the top of one of the fells. The description of that remind me
of others I’ve heard: my father’s description of watching the bombs falling on
Hull from the other side of the river; and a friend’s grandmother remembering
how she watched the Allied bombing of Nuremburg from the top of a hill.
A different baddy is an ageless bully, who throws his weight
around and expects to be excused everything because of bad things which have
happened to him in his past. These people still exist, so children and adults will
identify him from their own experiences.
The true antagonist though is war itself. It is that which
has separated Tarn from her brother, and that which has traumatised the
stranger, who is clearly suffering from PTSD and who is living with the shame
of being a deserter. By the Second World War, capital punishment for desertion
had been abolished, but the shame was still raw. To make amends with humanity,
the stranger begins to do kind things for the people in the village: making
anonymous offerings of food, doing much-needed manual tasks, and even saving
lives.
Tarn’s is eleven and, beyond the loss of her brother, her
next greatest concern is to pass her 11 Plus. And, in case you’re reading this
and don’t know what that means, it was the exam which was taken at primary
school to assess whether a child would be going to Grammar School or a
Secondary Modern. And this was a Big Deal: my 93-year-old Granny still laments
the fact that she didn’t pass her 11 Plus.
Not only a dual narrative, the book is a juxtaposition of
the everyday and the uniquely wartime, but even that is done in a gentle,
everyday sort of way. There is a beautiful reference to how gingerbread tastes
slightly different because some of the ingredients are being rationed.
I am very pleased I picked up The Angel of Grasmere and I would definitely recommend it to any youngsters interested in gentle adventure stories, or classes (late primary would be ideal) who are studying the Second World War. There are a host of references made which could generate activities to support that topic, and the book is a joy to read. I know this because I resented having to stop to remind my pupils to keep reading their own books!
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