Carrie’s War was based on Nina Bawden’s own experience as an evacuee and paints a
picture of an uncomfortable and unforgettable experience. Other novels with a similar
theme, for example, Hester Burton’s In Spite of All Terror (1968), Gordon Cooper’s A
Certain Courage (1975), Alan Spooner’s Rainbow Cake (1981) and Alison Prince’s How’s
Business (1987), show different experiences of evacuation. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
(1971), draws on Judith Kerr’s own experience as a refugee in France and England.
Elliot Arnold in A Kind of Secret Weapon (1970), with its passionate plea for resistance
against tyranny, and Bright Candles (1974) by Nathaniel Benchley, tell of the courage of
resistance workers in occupied Denmark. For a younger age group What About Me?
(1974) by Gertie Evenhuis shows Dirk’s endeavours to be part of his father’s work, not
glossing over the stark nature of the situation and its dangers.
Many other periods were written about. Shakespeare’s theatre, for example, featured
in two deep and literary stories by Antonia Forest, The Player’s Boy (1970), and The
Player and the Rebels (1971), in which the theatre and Shakespeare’s plays really come
alive and send the reader back to the original. Barbara Smucker, a Canadian, wrote
movingly of the underground railway for slaves using real figures, in Underground to
Canada (1977). Gillian Cross dealt with the effect of the building of the railway on a small
Sussex village where the hostility between the villagers and the navvies flares into
violence, in The Iron Way (1979). Peter Carter’s stark tale of the Peterloo Massacre, The
Black Lamp (1973), lacks the warmth to make it a rounded picture but again shows the
resistance to change. The Slave Dancer (Newbery Medal 1974), by Paula Fox, tells in a
series of economically worded episodes, of one boy’s experiences on a slave ship.
Marjorie Darke took the topic of the Suffragettes in A Question of Courage (1975), in a
powerful and emotional story of a working-class girl caught up in the movement.
Mildred D. Taylor wrote of her family’s life in Mississippi of the 1930s in her trilogy,
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), Let the Circle be Unbroken (1981), and The Road to
Memphis (1990). The dignity of the Logan family in the face of the bigotry of the whites is
magnificently drawn. Another American, Joan W.Blos gives an account of a year in the
life of a 14-year-old girl on a New Hampshire farm in 1830 in A Gathering of Days
(Newbery Medal 1980), a marvellous evocation of the period.
In the 1970s there was a burst of stories for children aged between 6 and 8. This
proved to be a difficult venture partly because of the difficulty of setting the historical
scene in a few words, and only a few writers succeeded. Penelope Lively was one of these
with Fanny’s Sister (1976), a perfect vignette of Victorian life.
The 1980s saw a falling off of the output: although Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease
and Barbara Willard were still writing, there were few names coming along behind.
Michelle Magorian showed promise in Goodnight Mister Tom (1981), an overlong story of
an evacuee and his relationship with an old man; Elsie McCutcheon produced Rat War
(1985), a perceptive story of a boy conquering his fear, set in the stringencies of post-
war Britain. Joan Lingard also wrote of the war in File on Fraulein Berg (1980), showing
how easily fear leads to suspicion, and Tug of War (1989), and Between Two Worlds
(1991), stories of refugees, based on family history. In the USA, Pam Conrad wrote
Prairie Songs (1985), a book which minces no words in telling of the tragedy of the
doctor’s wife who could not adjust to life in a’soddy’. Patricia MacLachlan wrote of
another woman’s arrival in the American west in Sarah, Plain and Tall (Newbery Medal
TYPES AND GENRES 371