the war that saved my life by kimberly brubaker bradley

And as the war progresses and things grow dire, she finds that the most dangerous thing isn’t the bombs or the war itself. Ada discovers Susan’s pony and is determined from the get-go to ride it. Under her care the siblings grow and change. Escaping to the English countryside, the two are foisted upon a woman named Susan who declares herself to be “not nice” from the start. So when the chance comes for Ada to join her fellow child evacuees, including her little brother Jamie, out of the city during WWII she leaps at the chance. Born with a twisted foot her mother considers her an abomination and her own personal shame. Enormously satisfying and fun to read, Bradley takes a work of historical fiction and gives the whole premise of WWII evacuees a kick in the pants.Īda is ten and as far as she can tell she’s never been outdoors. So when I read The War That Saved My Life I had to explain to her, at length, that in spite of the premise, cover (again with the kids staring out into nothingness), and time period this isn’t the bleak stretch of depressingness it might appear to be.

Still, that 10-year-old self is always with me and I confer with her when I’m reading new releases. Happily I got over this phase and eventually was able to go back to those books I had avoided to better see what I had missed. Books picturing kids staring out into the vast nothingness of the universe were of little use to me. Lord only knows what caused a book to be labeled “depressing” in my eyes before I’d even read it. Jacob Have I Loved? Not in this lifetime. Bridge to Terabithia? I’ll have none please. Selective in that I studiously avoided any and all works of fiction that might conceivably be considered “depressing”. As a child I was what one might call a selective reader.

The war that saved my life by kimberly brubaker bradley