Five Children on the Western Front

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I do meet kids from time to time that are on the lookout for historical fantasies, and this certainly fits the bill.

If I didn't know otherwise you could have convinced me this was a recently unearthed manuscript of Nesbit's. The daughter of the early public relations advocate Basil Saunders and his journalist wife Betty (née Smith), Saunders has worked for newspapers and magazines in the UK, including The Sunday Times, Sunday Express, Daily Telegraph, She, and Cosmopolitan. When I first saw that Kate Saunders had taken Nesbit’s classic trilogy and used the characters and place to tell her own story in commemoration of the First World War, I point-blank refused to touch it.This fits in nicely with the originals but I must admit, it was blindly obvious to me that a character that was supposed to be a cockney, was coming out with these kind of archaic sayings too! A heart-wrenching and poignant tribute to 'all the boys and girls, 1914-18', it is a must-read for children and adults alike, powerfully demonstrating the impact of World War I on a whole generation of young people. This is an absolutely wonderful book - a clever, referential reaction to a familiar story that has a lot of subtle, new things to say while still remaining true to its roots. Why invoke these particular characters and their background of fun, innocent childhood and put them in wartime unless you were interested in how that contrast communicated. Confronting issues of class, disillusion, meaningless war, and empathy, the book transcends its source material and is all the better for it.

Once again we meet the five children and their Psammead in Kate Saunder's novel Five Children on the Western Front, her novel inspired by Five Children and It. The Lamb and Edie have always been envious of all the adventures their older siblings had with the Psammead and are very excited to see him back. The other approach would be to take these children more as symbolic of a generation, to use the iconic nature of these characters to serve as avatars of a generation, heightening the experience of a generation into this idea of four carefree moppets plunged into the worst ind of adult reality. It is very well written and it's a nice continuation of Nesbit's classic series, with some light exploration of the effects of the War on life at home in England. It's a worthy continuation of a fantastic series, that should be read by old and new fans of Nesbit's alike.

The time is at the start of World War 1 and Cyril, the eldest of the Pemberton boys is off to fight. There are moments of both joy and horror that Saunders carries off with considerable aplomb, and one simple, heart-breaking image at the end of the story that pretty much makes the whole thing worthwhile. However, I was extremely surprised to discover that Saunders has actually written a children's book, with a fairly convincing impression of Nesbit's own authorial voice - and while that is often charming, and occasionally even disarming in more tragic moments, it's got its share of problems, too. Kate Saunders has written a heartbreaking yet beautiful companion novel, one that I will definitely be revisiting in the future - maybe after reading the original trilogy, although I think having a gap of a few years between reading The Story of the Amulet was beneficial as any obvious differences in voice weren't as clear cut, at least to me. At the time, I never really noticed that most of her books follow a reliable - even repetitive - pattern (short story mini-adventures of siblings strung out into a novel, often with a grumpy magical creature involved), that her language and attitude is distinctly upper-class, or that they wouldn't really work outside of their own era.

Saunders does make some reference to the original books but you could enjoy this without knowing anything.And in Saunders' book the four older children from Nesbit's books (Cyril, Anthea, Jane and Robert) have all reached young adulthood, ranging from 16-21 at the start of the story. And poor Jane desperately wants to go to medical school, which her mother refuses to allow, afraid she won't ever get married if she does go. Nesbit’s Psammead - only he seems different here: still grumpy, smug, all-knowing and all-powerful, but hiding something too. It is from this point in that I found that tonally, this is not a Nesbit story: it’s Saunders’ and what she does with these characters in a dark and unsettling situation is deeply clever and touching.

Photograph: Snap Stills/Rex 'Out of a sandy hollow pops the mythical creature' … Five Children and It. At the center of the novel, however, is the Great War and how it impacts everyone's life, even the Psammead. Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today.The older children (Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane) have all become teenagers, while the younger kids (Lamb and newcomer Polly) are the perfect age to better get to know the old creature’s heart. It's sad to see this character profoundly injured and that character die, but the book is so quick to an assurance that everything is all right really. For example, at one point the Psammead is taken to the future to speak at length with the deposed Kaiser, and the two find they have a lot in common. The very upper-middle-class-ness of it grated a little -- and even the working class Cockney character spoke like that, so idek what was going on there.