Tag WW1

An Anty-War Story

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An Anty-War Story
Tony Ross
Andersen Press

Of all the residents of Antworld, there’s only one little ant with a name. Meet the new born Douglas. Douglas watches the other ants carrying food and longs to fit in and be part of that ‘beautiful line’. But that isn’t the role the Chief Ant has in mind for him; Douglas’s destiny lies elsewhere. He too will march in line but instead of food, he will carry a rifle. Douglas is to be a uniform wearing soldier charged with defending Antworld and making it a safer place for all the little ants.

Douglas is proud of his uniform and his assigned role, as well as the banner-bearing band that marches behind the ‘rifle carrying ants’. But then war does come.

It comes in human form: shells WHIZZ and with a BANG Antworld is completely obliterated.

Ross shows this in a devastating shift from the colourful pageantry as the explosion spread is followed by a gloomy grey view of advancing WW1 soldiers with mustard gas swirling across the landscape and below a smudge of red in one corner, the words “The end.’

Then follows an equally sombre monument to the fallen.

That only serves to bring home the awful reality of how war can change lives in a single instant – one flash and it’s all over for some, or many.

Sobering and intensely powerful, a reading of this allegorical tale is certain to bring on discussion about war wherever it’s shared.

Finding Winnie

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Finding Winnie
Lindsay Mattick and Sophie Blackall
Orchard Books
When already past bedtime, young Cole requests a story, a true one, about a bear he gets just that. And so do we in this enchanting book about one that became the inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh. The story is told by the great granddaughter of Captain Harry Coles a vet ,who met and bought an orphan bear cub on a station just as he was about to depart for a World War 1 training camp.

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Named Winnipeg (after his home town), the bear captures the heart of Harry’s Colonel and is allowed to join the troops, becoming their mascot and eating them out of house and home. When they reach camp, Winnie becomes a fully fledged army member and even accompanies the soldiers across the Atlantic to England.

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Once there she has to contend with the rigours of regimental training on Salisbury Plain; but it’s there in the depths of winter that the call to fight comes. Harry then has a difficult decision to make; should he find a safe place for Winnie? It’s then that mind wins over heart: London Zoo is that safe place and there Winnie is soon charming its many visitors.

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There one story ends – kind of – and another begins for one of the zoo’s visitors is young Christopher Robin Milne. And the rest, we know is storybook literary history. A final ‘Album’ includes pertinent photographs (snapshots of Winnie, Harry and the soldiers, and Winnie and Christopher Robin), as well as some documents.
How deftly and magically the author weaves this historical story: it’s one that includes not only history but geography too. I particularly like the way Cole’s interjections move the story forwards: “ What do trappers do?” asked Cole.
“It’s what trappers don’t do. They don’t raise bears.” comes the response.
Equally magical are Sophie Blackall’s watercolour illustrations. Brilliantly expressive

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and gently humorous, every one is a delight to behold.
A winning combination through and through.

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