Lest They Forget

On this Armistice Day I have been thinking about the fact that as the years pass us by our brave and heroic wartime veterans are becoming fewer. For my generation, who's parents and grandparents lived through two world wars, we were drip fed their first hand accounts of life in wartime.  My parents were born and bred in London and experienced the horrors of the Blitz and I can remember growing up with a real sense of the fear they endured due to their personal recollections.

With each subsequent generation the lives of people in WWI and WWII become more distant and I got to thinking about the books I shared with my children when they were young to impart this hugely significant time through which their grandparents and great grandparents lived. 

Although aimed at a young readership, these books I have selected have relevance for us all and are the ones I most enjoyed reading with my children and continue to enjoy reading.

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

From the Children's Laureate of 2003 - 2005, a stunning novel of the First World War, a boy who is on its front lines, and a childhood remembered.

"They've gone now, and I'm alone at last. I have the whole night ahead of me, and I won't waste a single moment of it . . . I want tonight to be long, as long as my life . . ." 

For young Private Peaceful, looking back over his childhood while he is on night watch in the battlefields of the First World War, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside: his mother, Charlie, Big Joe, and Molly, the love of his life. Too young to be enlisted, Thomas has followed his brother to war and now, every moment he spends thinking about his life, means another moment closer to danger.

ISBN: 978-0007486441

Publisher: Harper Collins Childrens Books

Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

The gruff and surly Mr Thomas Oakley is less than pleased when he is landed with a scrawny little city boy as a guest, but because it is compulsory that each villager takes in an evacuee he reluctantly agrees. It soon becomes obvious to Mister Tom that young Willie Beech is hiding something, and as the pair begin to form an unlikely bond and Willie grows in stature and in confidence he begins to forget the past. But when he has to return to war-torn London to face his mother again he retreats into his shy and awkward ways once more.

ISBN: 978-0141354804

Publisher: Puffin Classics

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr

This semi-autobiographical and unforgettable story, of a Jewish family fleeing from Germany before the start of the Second World War, now reissued with its original cover illustration in this very special edition.

This internationally acclaimed story of one Jewish family’s flight from Hitler’s Germany has become a much-loved classic, and has been in print since its debut 45 years ago.

Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in Germany any longer. Suppose you found, to your complete surprise, that your own father was one of those people.

That is what happened to Anna in 1933. She was nine years old when it began, too busy to take much notice of political posters, but out of them glared the face of Adolf Hitler, the man who would soon change the whole of Europe – starting with her own small life.

One day, Anna’s father was missing. Then she herself and her brother Max were being rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they knew – home and schoolmates and well-loved toys – right out of Germany…

ISBN:  978-0007274772

Publisher: Harper Collins Childrens Books

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

First published over sixty years ago, Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl has reached millions of young people throughout the world.

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such close quarters, and her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up. Her diary ends abruptly when, in August 1944, they were all betrayed.

ISBN: 978-0141315188

Publisher: Puffin