Hello, friends. This is hardly breaking news, but I'm still bashing away at Monsoon Season, aka the Novel that Might Never End. It's supposed to be in three parts with a frame narrative. Part 1 is 50,000 words long. I'm now midway through Part 2 and it's sitting at 43,600 words. I really must do something about this - and I will, soon, but not until I've finished Part 2. Having spent some time … [Read more...]
Holocaust literature for younger children
"Who was Hitler?" asked my seven-year-old, a couple of weeks ago. It was 7.30 on a weekend morning. It turns out he'd been inspecting the books on my desk. I ought to have seen this coming: I've amassed heaps of primary and secondary sources about the Second World War over the past three years. It just never dawned on me that he'd go browsing through the unglamorous adult books in the study … [Read more...]
Nona Baker
Hello, friends. I'm currently time-travelling in the colony formerly known as Malaya. I'm interested, specifically, in the Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War and how different groups of Malayans responded to the threat. Here in the west, many people don't learn about WWII's Pacific theatre of war at school. Certainly, my own education focused on France, Britain and … [Read more...]
“Set Europe ablaze”
Hello, friends. This week's blog post is a spine-tingling sample of the women and men of the Special Operations Executive, England's diverse group of volunteer spies that operated on nearly every front of the Second World War. It's up now at the History Girls. Hope you enjoy it! … [Read more...]
Code Name: Verity
So, Code Name: Verity. It was first published in 2012. It was shortlisted for both the Printz Award and the Carnegie Medal, so it's not as though I'm drawing attention to unsung heroines, here. But I finally made time to read Elizabeth Wein's novel last week and when I'd finally finished sobbing, all I could wonder is why I'd let it languish for two years. As you may already know, Code Name: … [Read more...]