Puddles in the Lane

"I love reading about the Second World War. Goodnight Mr. Tom took me to Puddles in the Lane because I sought out more books on a similar theme. Like Michelle Magorian in Goodnight Mr Tom , Alan Parker was writing about things he knew. He has created a real detective story and it’s really visual. It does make me giggle, because it was only recently that I found out that it is written by Alan Parker, the film director . Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The boys, who are evacuees from London, are staying in this dark, old house in the West Country with two old spinsters and their freaky servant. They and their sisters are all living with families who aren’t their own and this teaches them how to make sense of the grown-up world, of other ways of living and of good and evil. As outsiders in a new environment the boys find out that they can do things that they previously, as city kids, could not have dreamt of. They adopt and love this new landscape and do not want to leave."