Spotlight on A Place to Hang the Moon
A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus (2021) is a beautiful book about what makes family and home as much as it is a historical novel about children evacuated to the English countryside during World War II.
William, Edmund, and Anna are orphans whose wealthy grandmother — their unloving guardian — dies in 1940. They determine that they should stowaway with others being evacuated from London because of the war and hope to find a new home in the countryside. The premise reminded me of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (minus Narnia) and The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, both featuring evacuees.
As the siblings are shuffled between different households, they face challenges. Some hosts resent them for taking resources away from their own kin while others are prejudiced against all evacuees. They also meet a friendly librarian who shows them kindness and warmth but is judged as unfit to house evacuees because of her marriage to a German man.
The style of writing made me think of a category of books that is harder to find these days, what I’ll call “modern old-fashioned.” These books are similar to the lyrical and slower style of books by Elizabeth Enright, E. Nesbit, and others from decades ago. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry, The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall, and The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series all fall into this category for me. They were all books that I double checked the copyright date on, thinking they might have been written in the 20th century instead of the 21st. Some of these examples include elements of parody, but with affection and no bite, so I can tell the authors love these older set of books as much as I do.
Perhaps my attraction is simply that I grew up reading the older books in this wordy, sometimes dreamy, smiling style. But knowing that these books have all garnered popularity in this current era, I think that readers enjoy a break from the (also enjoyable) breakneck speed of the adventures generally most popular these days.
I hope you will read A Place to Hang the Moon to discover how the siblings cope with their circumstances as evacuees and prove that choosing your own family can sometimes make the best homes of all.