One Boy's War

LoveReading4Kids Says

This powerful picture book captures both the optimism and the despair of the first months of the First World War. Only fifteen when the war is declared Sydney, like many other boys, longs to be old enough to have a crack at the bullying Kaiser. He watches as his father sets off for war with a spring in his step and his eyes shining.

And he also sees just how wretched it makes his mother. Nonetheless, lying about his age, he signs up and arrives in France. Sydney gives his impressions of the war in two contrasting accounts. To his mother he writes reassuringly; for himself he records the absolute horror of it all and the different kinds of terrible deaths that befall his friends.

LoveReading4Kids

About One Boy's War

Sixteen-year-old Sydney is overwhelmed by the excitement of the 1914 recruitment campaigns and the bravado of men leaving for the Great War. Bursting with enthusiasm, he runs away to join up, but soon finds himself a long way from home in a frontline trench where reality - and the rats - begin to bite. Told through Sydney's optimistic letters home and his journal, this is his honest portrayal of the disillusionment and degradation of life and death in the trenches of World War I.

Find This Book In