Five Children on the Western Front

LoveReading4Kids Says

Shortlisted for the 2015 Guardian Children's Book prize - One of our Books of the Year 2014 - October 2014 Book of the Month - Winner of the Costa Children's Book Award 2014

Witty, tender and full of insights into life love and politics, this is a brilliant book in its own right as well as a worthy tribute to E. Nesbit’s classic Five Children and It. The year is 1914. Anthea, Robert, Jane and Cyril, who has just enlisted, are now grown up, the Lamb is a schoolboy and even Edie, an addition to the family since the original, is old enough to meet the extraordinary and magical Psammead when he re-enters their life.

All the children are longing for some new adventures but has the Psammead still got his magical powers? As befits the serious times, the Psammead plays an invaluable role in helping the family understand the  First World War while also sorting out problems from his own past. Action-packed, funny and thoughtful this is a book to fall in love with. 

Although Kate Saunders' novel takes its inspiration from E Nesbit's Five Children and It, Five Children on the Western Front is an entirely stand alone novel and there is no need to have read the original classic.

Reviewed by Julia Eccleshare M.B.E
Julia Eccleshare has a lifetime of working within children’s books as a critic, an editor, an author and a commentator.
More reviews by Julia Eccleshare M.B.E

About Five Children on the Western Front

Have you ever wondered what happened to the Five Children and It characters when the First World War began? Cyril is off to fight, Anthea is at art college, Robert is a Cambridge scholar and Jane is at high school. The Lamb is the grown up age of 11, and he has a little sister, Edith, in tow. The sand fairy has become a creature of stories ...until he suddenly reappears.

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