A children’s book reminds us how despair can turn to hope
/The Boston Globe
A children’s book has made me feel a little better about all that’s going on in the world right now. Not complacent better, or less interested better. Just better.
Who knows how long I’ll feel this way. A day? A week? Until I foolishly watch World News Tonight, bad things from every corner of the earth, the tragic and trivial, crammed into a 30-minus-8-minutes-for-commercials slot? Until the middle of the night when sleep is impossible and everything bad that ever was, is, or will be kidnaps my brain? Until it’s next month or next year and we’re still in the same mess we are in today, with not just a virus killing us but a virulence that is as deadly?
My granddaughter Megan recommended the book. She told me about it last year when she was 12 and I meant to read it then. But then was before the pandemic. I got busy and forgot. This time, as she was talking to me, I clicked on Libby, borrowed the book, and when we hung up, I began to read. Libby, by the way, is the best library card ever. It’s digital. It’s free. And it delivers books to whatever device you have: phone, tablet, iPad, computer. No need to go to the library. The library is a few clicks away.
The book? “The War That Saved My Life” by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley? It’s recommended for “tweens,” children between the ages of 9 and 13. But this is not because the book wouldn’t be interesting to adults. It’s because the main character is a child and because there is no sex or profanity in the story. Hunger. Cold. Poverty. A cruel mother. Bombs raining down on cities and towns. Planes being shot out of the sky. Ships exploding. Cities crumbling. Men, women, and children being murdered. A war that killed 70 million to 85 million.
This content is perfectly OK for kids. But sex and profanity are not. Anyway, “The War That Saved My Life” is riveting. It’s about a young girl, Ada, who has a club foot and is imprisoned in a one-room flat in London by a mother who does not love her. She tells Ada she is hideous. And useless. She tortures her mentally and physically.
All Ada knows of the world is the room where she is kept, what she glimpses from a small window, and what her younger brother, Jamie, when he goes to school, comes back, and tells her. Ada is 9, maybe 10. She doesn’t know her age. She’s never celebrated a birthday. She doesn’t even know what a birthday is.
One day, England declares war on Germany. And because Londoners are certain the city will be a target for German bombs, many choose to send their children to live with families in the country, to keep them safe. Ada’s mother plans to send Jamie. But not Ada. No one would want her, she tells her daughter. No one would want a cripple.
Ada has never walked. She can’t even stand. But every day when her mother is at work and Jamie is at school, she forces herself to stand and teaches herself to walk. Because she wants to leave London, too.
One day she and Jamie sneak out of their flat and a train takes them to the country. The train is packed with children. Everyone else is chosen by welcoming families. But no one wants Ada and Jamie. They are skinny and dirty.
Ada narrates the story so you see everything through her eyes. Grass. Churchyard. She doesn’t know these words. She’s been locked up her whole life. She doesn’t know anything. But she is strong and bright and curious. Eventually, the children are taken to a young woman’s home where they are bathed and fed and cared for. And where, in time, they are loved by this woman.
But there’s a war going on. And every day is harder than the day before. For everyone. There’s more rationing. And less to eat. There’s no fuel for heat. No gasoline for cars. Blackout curtains make dark rooms darker. When German aircraft strafe villages, they hunker in shelters. Each day, there is less and less of everything.
There’s a sequel to “The War That Saved My Life” — “The War I Finally Won.” It’s from the sequel that this sentence comes: “Bombs fell from the sky. Boys fell from trees. Anything might happen. Anytime.”
It’s these words that make dealing with the now a little easier. “Anything might happen. Anytime.” Because this has always been true. COVID-19 is not the first tragedy to befall the world. Donald Trump is not the first leader to pit people against people. Injustice and inequality, racism and dogmatism, have long been with us. And still, despite it all, life is worth living. And fighting for.
And worth living and fighting to change.
