A beautiful tale set during the First World War with a courageous, innocent main character as he tries to understand the world he's left in. His father is away fighting, his neighbours leave as they are branded traitors and he takes up shoe shining only to discover his father is in a nearby hospital.

This was a really interesting read. The thing that I took the most from it was the fact that it caused such great discussion with the group of 10 year olds that I read it with. I have to admit that this was more popular with the boys in the group than the girls, something which I hoped wouldn't happen. But overall the discussion we had was great and it was really popular with the group.