Carrie's War

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden is the story of Carrie and her little brother Nick during World War II. The children were sent to live in the country, away from the bombings in London, for their own safety. I'd bet you $55 million dollars you could not show me a children's story with characters more real and more human. The children are placed with an absurdly cheap shopkeeper and his mousy sister for the war's duration, and they are very unhappy there, suffering from the shopkeeper's frugality and the sister's inability to stand up to her brother. Nevertheless, Carrie and Nick gradually form a relationship with the two, and come to see the underlying reasons for the miserly ways of the shopkeeper and the fearfulness of the sister, as they grow to know the household of an estranged sibling of the two. Very complex characters, and that's the great strength of this story. A 1001 CBYMRBYGU.