Carrie's War: Virago Modern Classics

A poignant and realistic picture of what the second world war was like for a child . . . Carrie's War captures the true reality of war for a child, and it doesn't sentimentalise war
A very touching, utterly convincing book about three wartime evacuees billeted to Wales. It's very much a children's story, with a mystery to be solved, but Nina Bawden is very subtle with her characterisation - even hateful Mr Evans with his cruel bullying is seen as sadly pathetic too. Carrie and her little brother Nick are a delight, but my favourite character is their friend Albert Sandwich. He might sport steel spectacles and have a few spots on his chin, but he's one of the most charming boys in all children's fiction
Delicately done, full of accurate and unsentimental understanding
Perhaps the best of Nina Bawden's excellent novels
Always an important book, but even more so now with the refugee and asylum seeker crisis that brings the book new relevance
What a deep, dark, deceptively simple, brilliant novel it is