This short, illustrated novel set in England during World War I captures the nonsensicalness of war from a child's perspective. John's father is away fighting while his mother works at the munitions plant in his city. John, white, is struggling to make sense of the war, wonders when it will be over. He's even written to the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury to ask them. (He's received no replies.) When a pacifist challenges John and his classmates to reject propaganda telling them "they" are at war -you're children, he says, you are not at war-the man is belittled and chased away, but not before dropping photos of German children. John secretly picks one up. The photo is labeled "Jan from Dusseldorf." John can't stop thinking about Jan and writes the German boy a letter, only to have the police show up at his house after mailing it. "You're raising a traitor, miss," the police tell his mom. Dreamed/imagined sequences in which John meets Jan are no more --and perhaps less -surreal than the actual trip John and his classmates take to the munitions factory in a story firmly grounded in John's open-hearted, innocent perspective in which politics do not matter (and has not, it must be noted, been influenced by the trauma of living in a war zone). Mostly somber black-and-white illustrations adeptly reflect the story's emotional tenor. (Ages 8-10)

Transcending its time and period, this moving and lyrical story, beautifully illustrated, explores the fear and hope of children in time of war.

I am just a child. How can I be at war?

It’s 1918, and war is everywhere. John’s father is fighting in the trenches far away in France, while his mother works in a menacing munitions factory just along the road. His teacher says that John is fighting, too, that he is at war with enemy children in Germany who seem to be much like him. One day, in the wild woods outside town, John has an impossible moment: a dreamlike meeting with a German boy named Jan. John catches a glimpse of a better world, in which children like Jan and himself can one day scatter the seeds of peace. David Almond brings his ineffable sensibility to a poignant and ultimately hopeful tale of the effects of war on children, interwoven with David Litchfield’s gorgeous black-and-white illustrations.