The Evacuee Christmas

A lovely book, that I looked forward to reading each evening, i enjoyed the ups and downs of the children from the different backgrounds.
I really didn't want this book to end - I'm sure a follow on could be done.

I enjoy reading about the war years ( my parents era ) in novel form but this was a different perspective from the evacuees and their trials and tribulations. Well worth reading

Thus is a really lovely story, very evocative of time and place. The east London children are forced into evacuation, because it is thought that the Docklands could be in serious danger of bombing, and you see the worries and fears from all sides, the parents worrying whether their children will be looked after, or that they will forget home, the children scared of the unknown, their hosts often not happy about accepting children as they would get more money by accepting an adult. Jessie and Connie are lucky, their parents have 'rainy day' savings, and make sure they have everything they need, but the book makes you aware that wasn't the case for all the children, some were ill prepared for the much colder Yorkshire climate.
You learn that travel was difficult, that people were frightened of being ill as it cost money to visit the doctor. You realise that when the children arrive in Yorkshire they don't understand what is being said to them, and the Yorkshire folk don't understand them either, which makes for a difficult start. Hostilities break out between the two factions of children when they have to share a school, and it gets quite violent.
Peggy goes with the children, her newly-enlisted husband Bill wants her out of danger away from London as she is pregnant with their long awaited first child, and you can feel and understand her misery and loneliness when he writes to her so rarely, hardly says anything, and never mentions the baby. She had thought that he was away fighting, but suspects he is still somewhere in England, training.
All in all, a lovely story, accurately relating a time that most of us can only imagine. Well worth reading.

A timely reminder of how primitive maternal medicine was in the 1940s - and how costly before the NHS, and thus we have the reluctance to seek medical help even when clearly necessary.
I loved the fact that both sides - the Yorkshire people and the Londoners - thought that the other was speaking a foreign language. Such broad dialects have now largely disappeared and you rarely hear a true Cockney, let alone broad Yorkshire with its old English/Viking words being used.
Funnily enough, I have just read an article suggesting that there are some good words in English we can use that have gone out of fashion - and another suggesting that we can br broaden our language by using some foreign words that have meanings in one word that take us several to try and describe! However, some of these words are very difficult to pronounce eg those from the Inuit language!

One thing that I hadn’t realised about WW2 was that the Govt had suggested - firmly - that all pets be euthanized, to save food of course.
I felt that the childrens’ behaviour as described was very believable, and overall found this a heart-warming, cosy story with a good possibility of follow-up books. After all, who wouldn’t want to know what happens about the abusive but absent husband and the doctor’s romance...

This is a very easy read giving a great feel for the early days of WWII and how it tore families apart with the evacuation of London.
Smashing story.