It’s Monday! What are You Reading?

Hello Bloggers! It’s Monday, Oct. 10!

This week, I continued on with my “Personal Reading Challenge” for the remainder of the semester. My reading challenge is to read Newbery Award winning books and nominees as well as and Golden Sower Award winning books and nominees. This week, I read and finished “The War that Saved My life” by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley which is a 2016 Newbery Award Winner.

SETTING: The setting of this story begins in a flat in London in the late 1930’s. Ada, a young girl with a club foot, her younger brother Jamie and their mother live in a one room apartment which has a table with chairs, one bed and a cupboard under the sink where Ada is stuffed when her mother is angry. The apartment is extremely dirty, cockroaches loom in the dark and moist cupboard and there is no bathroom so they all go in a pot that needs emptied. When they use the sink, they must scoop the dirty water out by hand. The people of London are worried the city may be bombed so parents of school children prepare to send (evacuate) the students off to the safer country-side, out of the city. Ada manages to escape as her mother sleeps and she and Jaime board a train for the countryside. They arrive in a depot in Kent where evacuees are chosen by people of the community to live with them during the crisis. The children go home with Susan Smith, a single, middle aged woman with no children of her own and a home that can accommodate a family of three. Her home is warm and clean, she provides structure and support for the children and she has a pony that lives in the pasture beside the home.

The two settings are extremely important in this story as they help form the type of people the children have become and the type of person their mother has become. The setting in the country has helped Susan become the woman that she is. I do believe that this kind of situation could happen in many war-torn countries and towns but the smells and sights that were described in each of the two places were unforgettable in the minds eye.

PLOT: Exposition: Ada and her younger brother Jamie live in a flat located above a bar in London with their mother in the late 1930’s. London is polluted and the flat is extremely small, dirty, infested with insects, has no toilet and offers no activities for the children. Their father is dead and their mother works in the bar downstairs. Ada has a club foot and her mother has chosen not to treat it medically. Instead, Ada is neglected verbally, emotionally and physically by her mother and made to stay in the room and look out the window. As Jamie ages, he begins to go out to play and eventually go to school and Ada stays in. She’s never been outside and never been loved by her mother, only punished for her deformity. Ada reaches the age of 10 (but she doesn’t really know her age or Jamie’s age) and she decides she’s going to teach herself how to walk on her club foot in hopes her mother might then love her. She begins to gain strength, even though her deformed foot can barely hold her weight and it tears open and bleeds often. She hides her struggles and successes from her mother as her mother will punish her for getting off of her chair. Her mother has told the entire community that Ada is simple and cannot attend school. No one but Ada and her family knows about her foot.

Rising Action: World War II is beginning and the Germans are attacking France and threatening to attack England and bomb London. Teachers and parents plan the evacuation of school aged children to the countryside where they think the children of London will be safe. The day the train is to leave, Ada sneaks out of her home and she and Jamie go to school and load the train to the countryside. After a long ride, they arrive in Kent which is where they will stand in a line and be chosen by people who live in the area and are willing to take on evacuees during this crisis. Ada knows she is deformed but hides it and tells others she’s been run over by a cart. No one chooses the two siblings. They are dirty, they don’t have any bags of clothing or rations and their clothes are filthy. The woman in charge of the evacuee placement takes the two children in her car to the home of a woman named Susan Smith. Susan lives alone, has never had children and really doesn’t want these! She isn’t rude about it, but feels as if she would do the children no good since she has no experience with children and is still very devastated by the loss of her companion and house mate. The children remain at Susan’s and she soon finds how neglected they have been. The children have impetigo and are extremely undernourished. Susan sets out right away to feed them and provide for them a clean and safe home.  The problem is, the children know they were not originally wanted by Susan and this becomes a large conflict in the story as Ada has a hard time accepting the kindness and understanding that Susan is constantly extending toward the children.

As time goes by, Ada begins to ride “Butter” the pony in Susan’s pasture and she becomes more comfortable with her new surroundings. She makes a friend with a girl next door and starts to work for that neighbor, helping him with the horses. Susan gives each of the children a make-believe birthday since they don’t know their ages or their birthdays. Susan helps Ada learn how to sew and knit and tells Ada it is possible to fix her club foot with surgery. Ada eventually learns how to be a volunteer helping soldiers that have been injured in the war. After Christmas comes and goes, birthdays come and go and a year has gone by, Ada is out riding and comes home to a surprise.

Climax: Just as things are starting to make sense in Ada’s life, just as she’s come to the realization that her mother could have fixed her foot as a child and didn’t, just as she’s accepting that her mother could have written back, just as she’s finally coming to terms with the fact that her mother doesn’t really care about her and maybe not even Jamie…Ada rides up to the house on her pony one day and there is her mother. Her mother is upset because she is going to have to start paying the government for placing her evacuated children so she has come to take them back to London with her. I was shaking as I read this part of the story! I was so mad that the mother had come in and wrecked all of the hard work Ada had done, all of the steps forward the new “little family” of Ada, Jamie and Susan had made together. Right in front of Susan, the mother hits Ada and starts the verbal, emotional and physical abuse all over again! She takes the children back to London, she’s got a new flat and sits a chair in front of a new window for Ada. She takes Ada’s crutches away as well as her shoes and suddenly Ada is back in prison.  As Jamie and Ada lay in bed at night, they realize that Susan loved them and that they loved her!

Falling Action: One day when Ada’s mom is out, Ada comes to the realization that this is her one and only chance. She finds her brother and her birth certificates and then confronts her mother upon her return home. Ada asks her mom if she ever really wanted children and why she came to get them. Her mom admits she doesn’t want them and that if she didn’t have to pay the government, she’d rather not have them home with her. So Ada promises her mother that she and Jamie will leave while she is at work that night and that her mother will never owe another thing for them (trusting that Susan will take care of the children upon their return).

They planned to leave before the sun came up but before that was able to happen, the air raid sirens went off. London was being bombed. Ada and Jamie left the apartment, Ada without her crutches. They fled slowly, since Ada was barefoot in the shards of glass and rubble, and found stairs leading downward, to safety. They had managed to find a bomb shelter. When the smoke cleared, Ada and Jamie sat safely but horrified in the bomb shelter and in walks Susan to save them. She had been searching for them and finally stumbled upon them. She wrapped her arms around them and took them home. When they returned to Susan’s home, they found it gone. It had been bombed in Susan’s absence while she searched for the children. If she had not been out looking for the children, she would have died. The last sight we see as the book comes to an end is the three of them holding hands. Susan had saved the children and the children had saved her!

I really saw two climaxes or two turning points in this story, but the larger one was that of the mother coming back into the picture. Another large turning point was when Ada confronted her mother and fought the war that had been brewing inside her for years. It was her actions, taking on her mom and making her admit that she didn’t want the children, that day that inevitably saved the two children.

THEME: The theme that I pulled from this story was PERSISTENCE! Each character was persistent throughout the story, some more than others. Mother was persistent in her neglect and abuse. Ada was persistent in her practicing to walk and that paid off when she was able to escape from her mothers flat and join the evacuees. Susan was persistent to the point of being a saint in dealing with Ada’s spells when she would get so scared and turn inside herself and also when she would have her fits. Susan was also persistent in that she kept washing the bedding for Jamie until the cat came and he didn’t wet the bed anymore. Ada was also persistent in that she was able to ride her horse and figure out why it wouldn’t trot. Ada was persistent since she checked the hill and beach every time she rode and finally caught a spy! Ada was persistent and followed Susan to town and became a volunteer! Jamie was persistent in his love and loyalty to Ada, even over his love and loyalty to his mother. Lady Thorton was persistent in that Susan must take on these children with nowhere else to go. Susan was persistent in writing the children’s mother to get permission to do the foot surgery. The teachers were persistent when they forced Lady Thorton to take on these children even though she had been expecting infants and mothers. Ada was persistent once she decided she was worthy of learning how to read and write and did just that. Stephen was persistent in staying with his charge since he was blind and needed the help. Stephen was also persistent in writing and asking Ada to tea.

All of the persistence which was evident throughout the story show the reader that if you want something badly enough and work hard to get it, you can achieve your goals! In my imagination, with the help of neighbors, the new little family is able to rebuild their home and they live there together until the children go off to college. Ada does go to school that next fall! In my imagination, Ada qualifies for the surgery to repair her foot and it is done sooner than later. Also in my imagination, Stephen continues to court Ada and they end up dating, his kindness was overwhelming at times.

I truly loved this story and found myself searching the internet about the war and bombs in London. I love when I can learn about history and, at the same time, love the characters that I’m reading about. It was a true gem!

I found a wonderful teachers guide, complete with lesson plans that can be used in a classroom while reading and analyzing this story. If you’re interested; please go to:  www.penguin.com/wp-content/…/03/WarThatSavedMyLife_Guide_15_4p_LR.pdf

 

All pictures in this blog were retrieved from Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/