I try to read between two and five middle grade novels every month, mostly because that’s the genre I like to write in, and the best way to learn a genre is to read in it. One of the best middle grade novels I’ve picked up so far this year was The War that Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.
The story follows Jamie and Ada Smith, who are the children of a cruel woman. The novel is written around the historical time period of Britain’s involvement in World War II, when cities were getting bombed by the Germans. Ada has a club foot, and because of it, her mother treats her like a monster and won’t let her out of the house. She watches the world from her front window. But when the other children in their poor part of town start leaving because of bomb threats and their mother talks of sending her brother off and keeping Ada at home, Ada hatches a plan and steals out one early morning with Jamie. They are placed with a woman named Susan in a country home, where Ada discovers a love for horses and Jamie discovers a pet cat and they both discover what it means to be loved in this unknown world, where they eat more than they’ve eaten before in their lives.
The War that Saved My Life was a superbly written story, with so much emotion and wonder and ache. Readers will ache for Ada as she learns what it means to be loved unconditionally. Readers with ache for Jamie as he begins to miss his tyrant mother. Readers will ache for Susan, who grieves the loss of her partner and the other person she feels who really understood her, at least until these strange children come along. Bradley tells the story from Ada’s perspective, which is an engaging, innocent, lovable voice.
Some of my favorite passages were ones where Ada was talking about her brother. She loves him so clearly and desperately.
“Jamie had a mop of dirt-brown hair, the eyes of an angel and the soul of an imp. Mam said he was six years old, and would have to start school in the fall. Unlike me, he had strong legs, and two sound feet at the ends of them. He used them to run away from me.
“I dreaded being alone.”
This passage digs up so much fear and so much emotion. We see what Ada will lose when her brother starts school, though he is already running away from her now, roaming the town without her. But when he starts school, she will be alone for much more of the day, and he is her only companion, because her mother refuses to let her out of the house.
Ada also uses some remarkable powers of description. Here, she is describing what it’s like in the train that is evacuating the children:
“The day got worse. It was bound to. The train stopped and started and stopped again. Hot sun poured through the windows until he air seemed to curdle. Small children cried. Bigger ones fought.”
We see not only what the situation was like from a 10-year-old’s perspective, but we also see a little of her pessimism: “The day got worse. It was bound to.” I was immediately drawn to her because of her observation.
And here she’s describing the house where they are taken after getting off the train, the home of Susan Smith:
“The house looked asleep.
“It sat at the very end of a quiet dirt lane. Trees grew along both sides of the lane, and their tops met over it so that the plane was shadowed in green. The house sat pushed back from the trees, in a small pool of sunlight, but vines snaked up the red brick chimney and bushes ran rampant around the windows. A small roof sheltered a door painted red, like the chimney, but the house itself was a flat gray, dull behind the bushes. Curtains were drawn over the windows and the door was shut tight.”
This is a great description of the place that ends up also being a great description of the woman who lives there: “Curtains drawn over the windows and the door was shut tight.” It will take children to fling open the windows.
Some of the emotion-filled passages were seen in the way Ada was trying to work out the difference between Susan Smith and her mother. Susan had called herself “not a nice person.” Ada tries to reconcile this:
“She was not a nice person, but she cleaned up the floor. She was not a nice person, but she bandaged my foot in a white piece of cloth, and gave us two of her own clean shirts to wear. They hung past our knees. She combed or cut the tangles out of our hair, which took ages, and then she made a big pan of scrambled eggs. ‘It’s all the food I have,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been shopping this week. I wasn’t expecting you.’
“All the food she had, she said, except there was butter on the slightly stale bread, and sugar in the tea.”
This passage shows such a stark contrast between the home they left and this one where they find themselves. It’s almost an awakening of sorts, but the way Ada repeat the words, “She was not a nice person,” suggests that she is trying to work out for herself whether Susan Smith is a nice person or whether she is just another Mam. She does not yet trust Susan Smith.
When living in their mother’s home, Ada and Jamie hardly ever bathed. In their new place, they are expected to bathe every day. Ada tries to come to terms with this:
“There was hot water, soap, a towel. I already felt clean, but the water was soothing. Afterward I put on new clothes called pajamas, that were supposed to be just to sleep in. Tops and bottoms, both blue. The fabric was so soft that for a moment I held it against my face. It was all soft, this place. Soft and good and frightening. At home I knew who I was.”
Ada does not know who she is in this new place, but she’s also terrified of leaving it. She doesn’t know how long they’ll be able to stay there, and she doesn’t really want to find her place, because she’d rather just expect the worst. She holds it all at arms’ length, but this is a passage that reveals the truth of her feelings, how she wants—no, longs—to pull it all close and hold it against her, if only for a moment.
Ada begins breaking during her stay with Susan Smith:
“Why would I cry? I never cried. But when I shook myself free of Miss Smith’s grasp, tears shook loose from my eyes and slid down my cheeks. Why would I cry? I wanted to hit something, or throw something, or scream. I wanted to gallop on Butter and never stop. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t run, not with my twisted, ugly, horrible foot. I buried my head in one of the fancy pillows on the sofa, and then I couldn’t help it. I did cry.
“I was so tired of being alone.”
This is such a lovely passage. It is confusion and sorrow and hope. Ada is a little girl tired of being alone, so worried that the person she is coming to love is going to leave her, or send her away, like her Mam did. This woman has been so kind and soft where her Mam was loud and hard, and she doesn’t know how to accept it, because she has never known anything else. And yet she has never wanted anything else more.
I love this metaphor that Ada stumbles upon, after reading The Swiss Family Robinson with Susan. She and Jamie have just asked what tempest-tossed means:
“Miss Smith liked at me over her mug of tea. ‘Caught a storm,’ she said. ‘Wind and rain and lightning, and if you’re in a boat, at sea, you get tossed from side to side. You’re all thrown about, because of the storm.’
“I looked at Jamie. ‘That’s us,’ I said. ‘All thrown about. We’re tempest-tossed.’ He nodded.”
When Susan touches her for the first time, Ada says this:
“It felt very odd to have her touch me. Of course it made me tense. But I didn’t go away inside my head. I sat on the sofa with Miss Smith’s arm around me, and Jamie breathing soft near my shoulder, and I watched the coal fire flicker, and I stayed right there, right there in that room, and none of us moved for half an hour. Jamie fell asleep, and Miss Smith and I just sat, neither of us saying a word, until it was time to put the blackout up, and make tea.”
She is not used to a loving touch, only one that is harsh and unkind, and it’s not only something that she has to get used to, but it’s something that she longs to have, as most children do, and is afraid she won’t get ever again.
The first passage to make me cry was this one:
“I hold perfectly still while she took off my sweater and blouse, and settled the green dress over my head. ‘Step out of your skirt,’ Susan said, and I did. She buttoned the dress and stepped back ‘There,’ she said, smiling, her eyes soft and warm. ‘It’s perfect, Ada, you’re beautiful.’
“She was lying. She was lying, and I couldn’t bear it. I heard Mam’s voice shrieking in my head. ‘You ugly piece of rubbish! Filth and trash! No one wants you, with that ugly foot! My hands started to shake. Rubbish. Filth. Trash. I could wear Maggie’s discards, or plain clothes from the shops, but not this, not this beautiful dress. I could listen to Susan say she never wanted children all day long. I couldn’t bear to hear her call me beautiful.”
It’s such a tragically beautiful passage that will grip those who have ever been hurt by one they loved and, at the same time, mend the pieces of their heart. It is difficult for a child to get the cruel voice out of their heads, so the kindness of another person makes a child feel angry and afraid. Ada is trying to figure out who it is who’s telling the truth, and it’s easier for a child like her to believe the terrible things than it is for her to believe the good ones.
In several of the passages between Susan and the children, Bradley slips in her behavior-philosophies, which I love, since these are philosophies we teach our children, too:
“‘It’s okay,’ I said, slipping my arm around his shoulders. ‘I was bad.’ I wondered if the presents were all for Jamie. Could any possibly be for me?
“‘Not bad,’ Susan said. She helped me down the last few steps. ‘Not bad, Ada. Sad. Angry. Frightened. Not bad.’
“Sad, angry, frightened were bad. It was not okay to be any of those. I couldn’t say so, though, not on that gentle morning.”
Susan is one who believes that our emotions are not who we are, and she tries to explain that to the children, though the damage of their Mam is a persistent damage to overcome.
In this passage, Ada wrestles with all her feelings:
“It was scary, how angry I felt inside. At Susan, for being temporary. At Mam, for not caring about us. At Fred, for wearing the scarf I had knit him from his wife’s wool every day, as though it was something special, when I could see myself how I’d dropped some stitches and picked up others, so that the scarf was full of holes.”
For Ada, her sadness manifests itself as anger. She feels anger because she is sad about all those things. She is caught in a place where she does not know what will happen tomorrow, and she doesn’t know how to reconcile that instability and not-knowing with anything else but anger. Anger is easier than sadness.
Ada, at times, is profound:
“I had so much. I felt so sad.”
“There was a Before Dunkirk version of me and an After Dunkirk version. The After Dunkirk version was stronger, less afraid. It had been awful, but I hadn’t quit. I had persisted. In battle I had won.”
This last passage accurately shows what happens to kids in adversity. Ada understands that even though she has endured something tough, she has come back out stronger and braver than she was before.
The War that Saved My Life was beautiful all the way through, deserving of its Newbery Honor recognition through and through.
