Whistling in the Dark

September 25, 2017
The “heart-sinking” wail of air-raid sirens, sparse food rations, and the agonizing separation from loved ones permeate this poignant story set in suburban Liverpool during the winter of 1940–1941, when the city was bombarded by Hitler’s Luftwaffe. In a preface, Hughes (Hero on a Bicycle) notes that she lived in the same area at the time as a teenager, so “it was very easy for me to imagine” the life of her heroine, 13-year-old Joan Armitage. She makes it easy for readers to do the same. An insightful observer, Joan empathizes with her lonely older sister, whose beau is serving in the Merchant Navy, and her stoic mother, who is still mourning her husband’s death at sea years earlier. In a subplot, Joan befriends Ania, a Polish refugee who is scorned by many, and protects the girl’s uncle, who deserts the army to find Ania. Amid the turmoil, Joan finds solace in creating art and her steadfast bond with Ania. Avoiding sensationalism, sentimentality, or predictability, Hughes shapes a real and raw novel helmed by a wise and gutsy protagonist. Ages 10–up.

November 1, 2017

Gr 5-8-For 13-year-old Joan Armitage, World War II has settled like a shroud over her family and community. Joan and her three siblings live alone with their mother after suffering the loss of their father, a merchant naval officer. Despite the ever-present danger of the Blitz, Joan and her school friends continue with their daily lives and adjust to a new normal in which they collect salvage, deal with shrinking food rations, and take cover in air-raid shelters when the German bombers speed by to barrage nearby Liverpool. When a Polish refugee girl arrives at school, Joan becomes embroiled in a covert effort to reunite her with her uncle, a British army deserter. Hughes' own memories of growing up in Liverpool in the 1940s inform Joan's character. The protagonist's authentic humor shines in her wry descriptions of family dynamics and mundane events like school dances against the backdrop of war, capturing the turmoil of Joan's struggle to comprehend the unimaginable while trying to live an ordinary life. Readers will be thoroughly drawn into the lives of the vivid characters, and will become invested in their downfalls and triumphs. VERDICT This must-read novel seamlessly blends history and coming-of-age without being didactic or overly nostalgic. Hand it to middle grade fans of World War II-set fiction.-Tara Kron, Aurora Public Library, Denver

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
Schoolgirl Joan Armitage is trying to adjust to life in her suburb near Liverpool in 1940, when everyone tries to carry on a normal life despite nightly air raids on the Liverpool docks by the Luftwaffe. Joan's father, a wireless operator on an oil tanker, was lost in the mid-Atlantic when his ship caught fire and sank, and she knows quite a few girls at school who have lost a father or brother in the war, too. Now Joan's mother, brother, and two sisters are just getting by. Hughes' matter-of-fact third-person narrative details how, despite the dangers of wartime, daily life can be boring, made bearable by friends, school life, an occasional movie, American music on the radio, and chores such as collecting salvage. While her previous World War II novel, Hero on a Bicycle (2013), offered the excitement of an occupied city (Florence) with a resistance movement, Joan's comparatively uneventful life is not without intrigue: who is that mysterious man Joan has seen in her yard? What's the story behind the new Polish girl in school? Why has Capt. Ronnie Harper Jones begun hanging around Joan's house, and how does he always manage to bring parcels of goodies? Aside from Polish Ania, the book's diversity does not extend much past Anglican Joan's Catholic and Jewish classmates. A fine war novel about living life despite trying circumstances. (Historical fiction. 9-14)

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January 1, 2018
1940 Liverpool is handily evoked in this wartime story of thirteen-year-old Joan and her sisters, brother, and widowed mother enduring air-raids, blackouts, and rationing. The story itself is generic and predictable, but it has enough gentle, old-fashioned appeal to speak to American Girls fans ready for something a bit more sophisticated.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)