The day war came there were flowers on the windowsill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, after a morning of studying tadpoles and drawing birds at school, war came to your town and turned it to rubble. Imagine if you lost everything and everyone, and you had to make a dangerous journey all alone. Imagine that there was no welcome at the end, and no room for you to even take a seat at school. And then a child, just like you, gave you something ordinary but so very, very precious.
In lyrical, deeply affecting language, Nicola Davies' text combines with Rebecca Cobb's expressive illustrations to evoke the experience of a child who sees war take away all that she knows.
"War comes one day when she’s at school — not in the morning, she explains, when her class is learning about volcanoes and tadpoles, but in the afternoon, 'just after lunch.' The juxtaposition of the girl’s routine and the catastrophic events heightens the tragedy.... Gentle, childlike drawings by Cobb (There’s an Owl in My Town) help soften the blows in this story by Davies (King of the Sky), published in association with Help Refugees, about a girl in a country at war." — Publishers Weekly
Recommended Age | 6 - 9 |
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Author | Nicola Davies |
Illustrator | Rebecca Cobb |
ISBN | 1536201731 |
Publication Date | Sep 4, 2018 |
Publisher | Candlewick |
Language | English |