by Jean Little
Boys:
2 vests
2 pairs of underpants
pair of trousers
2 pairs of socks
6 handkerchiefs
pullover or jersey
Girls:
vest
pair of knickers
petticoat
2 pairs of stockings
6 handkerchiefs
slip
blouse
cardigan
What else did they pack in their suitcases?
overcoat or mackintosh
comb
1 pair of Wellington boots
towel
soap
facecloth
toothbrush
boots or shoes
plimsolls
sandwiches
packet of nuts and raisins
dry biscuits
barley sugar (rather than sugar)
apple
Images and Documents
Image 1: Tearful children sit before the rubble that was once their home in London, September 1940.
Image 2: A girl in Battersea stands in front of her ruined home following a bombing raid.
Image 3: Children evacuate London by train, en route to a safer location in the British countryside. They could not know that it might be five years before they were able to return home.
Image 4: A group of British children huddled in a ditch look up when they hear bombers flying overhead during an air raid in 1940.
Image 5: Firefighters in London struggle to put out a fire after one of the nightly raids, this one in 1941.
Image 6: Daily life in bombed British towns and cities still carried on despite fear and upheaval. Schooling was often disrupted because of air raids, or because students had spent the night in an air-raid shelter.
Image 7: Evacuee children from Britain arrive in Montreal, Quebec, July 7, 1940. Most had no idea they would be staying until the war ended in 1945.
Image 8: Sailors recently enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy depart Ottawa’s Union Station in November, 1940.
Image 9: The Canadian government created many posters urging citizens to purchase victory bonds.
Image 10: Certificates were given to Canadians who took out loans in order to buy Victory Bonds in support of the war effort.
Image 11: On the home front, posters such as this one urged children to collect rags, old metal, scrap paper — even milkweed pods for stuffing lifejackets — as part of the war effort.
Image 12: A boys’ group poses with collected scrap metal.
Image 13: Princesses Elizabeth (right) and Margaret Rose speak to evacuee children on the BBC in October 1940, a month after the Blitz began.
Image 14: Canada in 1940. At that time Newfoundland and Labrador were still not part of the country.
Credits
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Cover portrait: Christine Cann, courtesy of Steve Cann.
Cover background: Bristol at war 1941, courtesy of Paul Townsend.
June 6, 1941 (Later) diary entry: from John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields”.
List of Required Clothing: Courtesy of Mandy Barrow.
Image 1: National Archives and Records Administration, NA-306-NT-3163V.
Image 2: Toni Frissell, Library of Congress, LC-F9-02-4501-24A.
Image 3: London’s Children, Parker/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, 3070717.
Image 4: Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-93161.
Image 5: National Archives and Records Administration, 306-NT-901C(11).
Image 6: National Archives and Records Administration, 195566.
Image 7: The third contingent of evacuee children from Britain, Library and Archives Canada, PA-142400.
Image 8: Unidentified members of the Royal Canadian Navy in a train leaving Union Station, Ottawa, Ontario, November, 1940, Library and Archives Canada, PA-204286.
Image 9: Buy Victory Bonds, Archives of Ontario, C 232-2-12-0-2.
Image 10: Certificate of Honour, Second Victory Loan, William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library, 00001109.
Image 11: We Want Rags for Vital War Needs!, Library and Archives Canada, C-087546.
Image 12: Boys’ group does salvage work, The Gazette Photo Collection/Library and Archives Canada, PA-108279.
Image 13: Royal broadcast, Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, 3425153.
Image 14: Map by Paul Heersink/Paperglyphs. Map data © 1999 Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada.
The publisher wishes to thank Dr. Helen Brown of Vancouver Island University, author of “Negotiating Space, Time, and Identity: The Hutton-Pellett Letters and a British Child’s Wartime Evacuation to Canada,” published in Letters Across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants, for sharing her expertise. Thanks also to Barbara Hehner for her careful checking of the factual details.
This story is for Charlotte Mary Langridge
Born January 15, 2008.
Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
And for Madison, Sidney, Natalie and Azlin.
About the Author
When Jean Little’s family came home from Taiwan to live in Canada in August, 1939, Jean was seven years old. The Littles landed just one month before the outbreak of World War II. She was eight when British children, known as war guests, began to be sent from England to safety in Canada. In the summer of 1940, Jane Browning and Jean Little were the same age and for both, Canada was an unknown country.
Although she was younger than Charlotte, Jean was able to draw on many childhood memories for this story. She knew three children who were war guests. She remembers giving half her allowance to buy War Savings Stamps. She remembers Hitler and his goose-stepping troops in newsreels. She also recalls movies featuring child actress Elizabeth Taylor, who was just one month younger than she was. How excited everyone was when the first movies in colour were shown!
Jean longed for a rubber doll which you could bathe, but nothing made of rubber was available because it was needed for the war effort. Plastic had not been invented, so broken dolls were common. And no rubber meant no elastic. Women did up their underpants with a button and there were lots of stories about these buttons coming undone and the pants dropping to the ground in the most embarrassing locations.
When Jean and her brothers were kids, they listened to favourite radio programs on their big family radio, just as children today watch TV shows. She also knows what it’s like when your parents take in children who need a home — something her own mother did, just like Mrs. Twiss taking in Jane, but also giving Sam and Pixie and even Terry a home when they needed one. Like Charlotte, Jean had mixed feelings about having to share.
One of Jean’s favourite parts of working on this story was remembering the words to old songs until she could sing them right through again. She also enjoyed listening, on Talking Book, to Kit Pearson’s The Guests of War trilogy, plus most of the other stories that the children in the book enjoy. One of the hard parts about recalling the past, she says, is wanting to put every vivid memory into your book but facing the sad fact that you can’t.
Jean Little is one of Canada’s — and the world’s — best-loved writers for children. She has published more than fifty books, including novels, autobiographies, poetry and picture books. Some of her best-known titles include From Anna; Mine for Keeps; Willow and Twig; Hey World, Here I Am; One to Grow On; Once Upon a Golden Apple; Wishes; On a Snowy Night and Little by Little. Jean is the author of four other books in the Dear Canada series: CLA Book of the Year Award winner Orphan at My Door, CLA Honour Book and Geoffrey Bilson Award finalist Brothers Far from Home, Red Cedar nominee If I Die Before I Wake and Rocky Mountain Book Award nominee All Fall Down. Her novel Dancing Through the Snow, about an abandoned girl helping a dog rescued from a puppy mill, was short-listed for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award and the Diamond Willow Award. Pippin t
he Christmas Pig won the Mr. Christie Book Award, and Listen, Said the Donkey was a Canadian Children’s Book Centre starred selection. Jean’s picture book, The Sweetest One of All, was named a Toronto Public Library First and Best Book. Among her many other awards are the Vicky Metcalf Award for Body of Work, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Matt Cohen Award and the Order of Canada. Jean has been nominated eight times for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Jean lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her sister Pat, her great-nephew and several dogs, including her guide dog Honey.
Acknowledgements
I have so many people to thank for help with this book that I am sure I am going to leave someone out, but I am deeply grateful to those I name below and to anyone I might omit.
First of all, my thanks go to Sandy Bogart Johnston, the editor of the Dear Canada series. Her patience, humour, insight and editing skills are phenomenal. I am also grateful to Diane Kerner, who read Charlotte’s diary with intelligence and enjoyment. Thank you, too, to all at Scholastic who work hard to make this series so appealing.
My sister, Pat de Vries, not only helped with research but often came to my rescue when I was stuck or grew discouraged. My niece, Robin Little, found me song lyrics, movie titles, information on sulfa and the Blitz and so much more. Elizabeth Bristowe supplied me with helpful details about Britain in 1940–41. She also spotted some of my mistakes.
Sheila Stephens read the manuscript and assured me I was on the right track. Her daughter Jenny helped me with research and made me taste Marmite. I, like Charlotte, was unimpressed.
Barbara Hehner was, as usual, a godsend to a blind author who is prone to making both glaring and tiny errors.
Dr. Helen Brown was extremely perceptive with her critical comments, enthusiasm and useful facts.
These folks also upheld me and kept me straight: the staff at the Guelph Public Library, George and Ethel Hindley, Betty Lou Clark, Pat McCraw, Jenny Rodd, Mary Hockin and Claire Mackay.
I am grateful, as well, to the authors of books not previously mentioned, that provided me not only with facts but with feelings: Geoff Bilson’s The Guests of War, Hester Burton’s In Spite of All Terror and P.L. Travers’s I Go By Land, I Go By Sea — I read it when I was a teenager and it moved me and started me imagining what it must be like to be exiled from home because of a war.
Thank you, one and all.
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Charlotte Mary Twiss is a fictional character created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
www.scholastic.ca
Copyright © 2010 by Jean Little.
Published by Scholastic Canada Ltd.
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ISBN: 978-1-4431-2810-0
First e-book edition: December 2015
Books in the Dear Canada Series
All Fall Down, The Landslide Diary of Abby Roberts by Jean Little
Alone in an Untamed Land, The Filles du Roi Diary of Hélène St. Onge by Maxine Trottier
Banished from Our Home, The Acadian Diary of Angélique Richard by Sharon Stewart
Blood Upon Our Land, The North West Resistance Diary of Josephine Bouvier by Maxine Trottier
Brothers Far from Home, The World War I Diary of Eliza Bates by Jean Little
A Christmas to Remember, Tales of Comfort and Joy
A Country of Our Own, The Confederation Diary of Rosie Dunn by Karleen Bradford
Days of Toil and Tears, The Child Labour Diary of Flora Rutherford by Sarah Ellis
The Death of My Country, The Plains of Abraham Diary of Geneviève Aubuchon by Maxine Trottier
A Desperate Road to Freedom, The Underground Railroad Diary of Julia May Jackson by Karleen Bradford
Flame and Ashes, The Great Fire Diary of Triffie Winsor by Janet McNaughton
Footsteps in the Snow, The Red River Diary of Isobel Scott by Carol Matas
Hoping for Home, Stories of Arrival
If I Die Before I Wake, The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona Macgregor by Jean Little
No Safe Harbour, The Halifax Explosion Diary of Charlotte Blackburn by Julie Lawson
Not a Nickel to Spare, The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen by Perry Nodelman
An Ocean Apart, The Gold Mountain Diary of Chin Mei-ling by Gillian Chan
Orphan at My Door, The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope by Jean Little
Pieces of the Past, The Holocaust Diary of Rose Rabinowitz by Carol Matas
A Prairie as Wide as the Sea, The Immigrant Diary of Ivy Weatherall by Sarah Ellis
Prisoners in the Promised Land, The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
A Rebel’s Daughter, The 1837 Rebellion Diary of Arabella Stevenson by Janet Lunn
A Ribbon of Shining Steel, The Railway Diary of Kate Cameron by Julie Lawson
A Sea of Sorrows, The Typhus Epidemic Diary of Johanna Leary by Norah McClintock
A Season for Miracles, Twelve Tales of Christmas
That Fatal Night, The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton by Sarah Ellis
A Time for Giving, Ten Tales of Christmas
Torn Apart, The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi by Susan Aihoshi
To Stand On My Own, The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson by Barbara Haworth-Attard
A Trail of Broken Dreams, The Gold Rush Diary of Harriet Palmer by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Turned Away, The World War II Diary of Devorah Bernstein by Carol Matas
Where the River Takes Me, The Hudson’s Bay Company Diary of Jenna Sinclair by Julie Lawson
Whispers of War, The War of 1812 Diary of Susannah Merritt by Kit Pearson
Winter of Peril, The Newfoundland Diary of Sophie Loveridge by Jan Andrews
With Nothing But Our Courage, The Loyalist Diary of Mary MacDonald by Karleen Bradford
Go to www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada for information on the Dear Canada series — see inside the books, read an excerpt or a review, post a review, and more.