Product Description

Set in WW2, Carrie and her little brother are evacuated to Wales and billeted at the home of the bullying Mr Evans and his timid sister Lou. Unhappy at home, they love visiting fellow evacue, Albert, at the farm of Druid's Bottom. Here they meet Hepzibah Green, who knows magical stories, and Mister Johnny, who speaks a language all his own. But then things go wrong and Carrie takes things into her own hands - without guessing the awful consequences.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4825 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
The stingy fundamentalist shopkeeper Mr. Evans and his timid sister Aunt Lou provide a secure if spartan existence for youngsters Carrie and Nick during their time as evacuees from wartorn London. And for warmth and good food, there was always their treasured visits to the kitchen at Druid's Bottom, where the witch-wise servant woman Hepzibah cared for Mr. Evans' senile sister Dilys Gotobed, for mute and retarded Mr. Johnny and for fellow evacuee Albert Sandwich. Years later as she recalls these scenes for her children, Carrie is still haunted by the fear that her spiteful defiance of an old superstition may have caused the conflagration at Druid's Bottom that she glimpsed from a train window on the day of her departure. And she remembers the time when everyone believed that by confiding in Mr. Evans, for whom she alone felt pity, she had helped rob Hepzibah of her rightful inheritance. The murky atmosphere of the eccentric country household and the nitpicking routines dictated by Mr. Evans' compulsive thrift are adroitly contrasted, but the real reward is Carrie's insight into the loneliness of an unsympathetic old man. The realities of chilblains and fried bread in a Welsh mining town and the mysteries of that remembered "dark green, silent place" in the valley overgrown by yew trees are fused into a story of hushed suspense and emotional complexity. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Nina Bawden is one of today's best writers for both adults and children. she has often used her own childhood experiences in her books - Carrie's War is set in the mining valley in Wales where she lived as an evacuee in wartime. She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Somerville College, Oxford and finished her first novel the year after she took her degree. She won the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction for The Peppermint Pig.