In the mouth of the wolf by Michael Morpurgo

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Ill. by Barroux. Egmont, 2018. ISBN 9781405285261
(Age: Independent readers) Recommended. In the village of Le Pouget, in the Languedoc region of south west France, Francis Cammaerts is resting after the celebrations for his 90th birthday come to a close. As dusk turns to dark and the church bell strikes midnight, he thinks of those who have been a part of his journey to this ripe old age - those who raised him, supported him and had so much to do with the man he became. And from those reminiscences comes a story of determination, danger, courage and heroism that would have gone untold if not for Morpurgo's pen and Barroux's brush.
One of two sons born during the Great War, Francis grows up to be a teacher while his brother Pieter is a burgeoning actor. But when World War II breaks out, the brothers take very different paths. Frances believes war is futile and barbaric, that people should not descend to the level of the fascists and that only education and pacifism are the "way forward for humanity". Pieter, however, believes that pacifism will not stop Hitler, that the cruelty of fascism had to be confronted and so he became a Sergeant Navigator in the RAF. While he eventually went to join a bomber squadron in Cornwall, Francis went to Lincolnshire to work on a farm having justified his beliefs to a tribunal.
But when Pieter is killed returning from an air raid over France and a bomb dropped by a German plane kills the family on the next farm including including baby Bessie, Francis begins to rethink his decision, particularly as he now has a wife and the birth of his own child is imminent. He talks to Harry, his mentor from his teaching days - a conversation that changes his life forever as it leads him into the silent world of the secret agent working with the Resistance in France . . .
As with Flamingo Boy, Morpurgo shines a light on the real story of war and its impact on ordinary people by taking an unusual perspective and telling the story through that. This is not a tale of derring-do embellished with action scenes and special effects - although it could be that in the hands of another - but a quiet tale of remembrance and reflection, of the impact of the legacy of others on a particular life, when that life itself has left its own legacy. Morpurgo has said, "This book may read like fiction. But it is not. That is because it does not need to be." It is the story of his own uncles.
Generously illustrated using family photographs which are included at the back of the book as well as biographical details of those who had such a profound impact within the story, Morpurgo has produced a work that not only tells yet another untold story of the war but one which has shaped his life too.
One for independent readers wanting something different, compelling and utterly readable.
Barbara Braxton

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