1930s/40s England

Without quite meaning to, I've read a few books recently that together paint a picture of life, particularly for children and families, in Britain in the 1930s and early 40s.

The first was Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian. It's hugely popular in the UK - in fact it was recently voted favorite Puffin of all time (a popular paperback series celebrating its 70th anniversary), but is barely known in the U.S. Set during WWII in England, the protagonist is a young boy who's been evacuated from London to the countryside to live with a gruff old gent, Mr. Tom. William, as it turns out, has been mistreated by his mother, and finds a much warmer, happier home with Mr. Tom. The book is definitely a tear-jerker, but not always in the obvious spots in the story. But between the British dialect and the historical setting largely unfamiliar to children in the U.S., it has never found a large following here.


Perhaps because of this book, a couple of others caught my eye at the library recently and I've been reading them:

• 1930s Britain, part of what seems to be a very accessible and well-illustrated series from Shire Books in England.
• War Boy: A Wartime Childhood by Michael Foreman. It's a children's book about the author's early childhood during WWII, when he lived near Lowestoft, on the far eastern tip of England. The area was hard-hit by bombs during the war and hosted a revolving door of British and Allied soldiers.