Three siblings William, Edmund, and Anna. Orphans evacuated from London to the country during the Blitz. A kind librarian. Difficulties with the natives. These and other elements of the story are timeless and not-so-oddly reminiscent of other beloved stories about children evacuated during World War II from bombed out London. Edmund is the naughty brother in this story just like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. As in Noel Streatfeild’s When the Sirens Wailed, the children’s billets and foster families are not the best, and they are threatened with separation and even abuse. The children encounter cruelty and prejudice but also kindness (and they eventually gain a new home) just as the the child in Goodnight Mr. Tom by Michelle Majorian did. All of these echoes of other stories and the new characters and ideas in this one make this debut middle grade novel by an American author a delight and an adventure.

I did find one Americanism in the book (that an editor should have caught): British children carry torches or electric torches, not flashlights. I know this because for a long time in my childhood I wondered why modern day British children were carrying around torches, sticks with a flame on the end. I only found out that a torch was a flashlight much later in my reading life. (I won’t say how much later.)

The books that are not only alluded to but actually featured in this book make for pleasant reading and pleasant memories. William, Anna, and even Edmund are all readers, and they depend on books to comfort and defend them when life becomes difficult and even unbearable. Some of the classics that the children read over the course of the story: The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Winnie-the Pooh by A.A. Milne, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, and best of all The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Only one of he books that these British children read was one I had never heard of: The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter. It sounds incredible, and I’m determined to find a copy and read it soon.

William, age twelve, is working on a multi-year project of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica straight through, beginning to end. He’s on the fourth volume HER(cules) to ITA(lic) as the children leave for the country, and he of course takes this volume with him on the journey. Unfortunately, volume 4 of the encyclopedia isn’t much help as William, Anna, and Edmund encounter bullies, nits, rat-killing, poverty, and neglect, but eventually they do find a home and a someone who thinks, like their Mum used to say, that these particular children “hung the moon.”