War Is Over

by David Almond, David Litchfield (Illustrator)

Overview

Transcending its time and period, this moving and lyrical story, beautifully illustrated, explores the fear and hope of children in time of war.

I am just a child. How can I be at war?

It’s 1918, and war is everywhere. John’s father is fighting in the trenches far away in France, while his mother works in a menacing munitions factory just along the road. His teacher says that John is fighting, too, that he is at war with enemy children in Germany who seem to be much like him. One day, in the wild woods outside town, John has an impossible moment: a dreamlike meeting with a German boy named Jan. John catches a glimpse of a better world, in which children like Jan and himself can one day scatter the seeds of peace. David Almond brings his ineffable sensibility to a poignant and ultimately hopeful tale of the effects of war on children, interwoven with David Litchfield’s gorgeous black-and-white illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536211931
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	41 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

David Almond is the acclaimed author of many award-winning novels for children, including Skellig, The Tightrope Walkers, and The Tale of Angelino Brown. He has also collaborated with many celebrated artists, including Polly Dunbar, Dave McKean, and Oliver Jeffers, on fiction for younger readers. David Almond's books are beloved all over the world, and in 2011 he was the recipient of the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. He lives in England.

David Litchfield first started to draw when he was very young, creating comics for his older brother and sister. Since then his work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, and books and on T-shirts. His first picture book, The Bear and the Piano, won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. He is the illustrator of When Paul Met Artie: The Story of Simon&Garfunkel by G. Neri. He lives in England.

I grew up in a large Catholic family in Felling-on-Tyne: four sisters and one brother. I always knew I’d be a writer —I wrote stories and stitched them into little books. I had an uncle who was a printer, and in his printing shop I learned my love of black words on white pages. I loved our local library and dreamed of seeing books with my name on the cover on its shelves. I also dreamed of playing for Newcastle United (and I still wait for the call!). There was much joy in my childhood, but also much sadness: a baby sister died when I was seven; my dad died when we were all still young; my mum was always seriously ill with arthritis. But it was a childhood, like all childhoods, that provided everything a writer needs, and it illuminates and informs everything I write.

After school I read English and American literature. When I graduated I became a teacher — long holidays, short days, just perfect for a writer. After five years I gave up the job and lived in a commune in rural Norfolk where I wrote a long adult novel that was rejected by every U.K. publisher. I had two collections of short stories published by the tiny IRON Press. I started another adult novel, put it aside, and suddenly, out of the blue, I found myself writing Skellig. It was as if the story had been waiting for me, and once I began, it seemed to write itself. I hadn’t expected to write a children’s novel, but in some way it was the natural outcome of everything I’d done before, and was the stepping-stone to everything I’ve done since.

For years, I was hardly published and hardly anyone knew about me apart from a handful of keen fans. And I made just about no money at all from writing. That didn’t really matter to me. I’d keep on writing, no matter what. Then I wrote Skellig, and everything changed. I began to sell lots of books, to be translated into many languages, to travel, to win lots of prizes. I’ve written a number of novels after Skellig, including Kit’s Wilderness, The Fire-Eaters, Clay and A Song for Ella Grey. There have been stage versions of the novels, and films and an opera are on their way.

Three Things You Might Not Know About Me:

1. I love Japanese food — except for the thing I was given once that looked like an alien’s brain.

2. My first TV appearance was as an altar boy in a televised mass when I was eleven.

3. My grandfather was a bookie (he took bets on horse races). His advice? “Never bet.” He also told me, “Never read novels. They’re all just lies.”

Editorial Reviews

03/30/2020

Taut and teeming with emotion, Almond’s historical novel is an affecting portrait of an English boy’s perspective on a seemingly endless, unfathomable war. In 1918, John’s father has been off fighting in France for so long that John hardly remembers him, and his mother works “overtime, double time” in an enormous munitions factory. Bewildered by his teacher’s declaration that “we are all engaged in the fight to defeat the evil German,” John “kept on daring to ask himself, ‘I am just a child. How can I be at war?’ ” This question frames other experiences: he watches townsfolk pummel a pacifist, imagines being transported to the front, and has a dreamlike encounter with a German boy who’s his same age and height and, John senses, is likewise “yearning for the war to end.” The straightforward narrative by Almond (Skellig) juxtaposes moments of violence and beauty: John’s mother explains how to fill a shell with shrapnel and resin, then spreads his bread with homemade rose hip jam. Reinforcing the atmosphere are often haunting black-and-white illustrations created by Litchfield (The Bear and the Piano); one especially effective image shows John watching pigeons overhead morph into shrapnel shells. Ages 9–12. (May)

Publishers Weekly

This slim volume contains depths that adults will wish to explore with young readers, from allusions to "Bread and Roses" to the meaning of the white feathers used to shame pacifists but that the scorned Uncle Gordon proudly claims as things of beauty. The story offers rich material for considering the impact of war on those on the homefront as well as the toll rabid conformity and hatred of the Other takes. A testament to essential humanity.
—Kirkus Reviews

Litchfield's art makes good use of positive and negative space that helps to focus attention on particular objects (such as doves that turn into bombs), as well as convey mood through the use of light and dark. Together with Almond's text, the drawings help to illuminate children's feelings about conflict and should spark conversations about war and peace.
—Booklist

This story is timeless and relevant for today's world. Grayscale illustrations accompany and support the narrative, showing readers that in war there is often no black and white, only the grey areas where each person must follow their own convictions and sense of what is right.
—School Library Connection

From the Publisher

2020-02-09
A young boy in the north of England wrestles with the repercussions of World War I.

John’s father is away at the front; his mother works in hazardous conditions at the munitions factory. When John’s classmate’s uncle, a conscientious objector and therefore outcast, agitates for peace, he is dragged off by the police, leaving behind only some drawings of German children. One escapes destruction by John’s classmates—a portrait of a boy called Jan that John secretly saves. Nudging the line between imagination and reality in classic Almond fashion, the deceptively simple third-person narrative describes how John and Jan meet in the dark woods and connect as children who simply long for peace. In scenes enhanced by Litchfield’s dreamy, haunting black-and-white illustrations, Almond effectively juxtaposes the contradictions of war: John’s warm, loving mother uses her hands both to make rose-hip jam for his bread and to build weapons that will kill other small boys just like him. This slim volume contains depths that adults will wish to explore with young readers, from allusions to “Bread and Roses” to the meaning of the white feathers used to shame pacifists but that the scorned Uncle Gordon proudly claims as things of beauty. The story offers rich material for considering the impact of war on those on the homefront as well as the toll rabid conformity and hatred of the Other takes.

A testament to essential humanity. (Historical fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews