Ada is a young girl living with her mother and little brother in a one room apartment in London, and it's only months before England enters WWII. The plan is to send many of the children of London away to the countryside, with the expectation that the city will be bombed by Germany. But for Ada, this means that her brother will be sent away- not her. Why? Because she has never been allowed outside the apartment due to having a clubfoot that her mother says made her unlovable and evil and she would only disgust anyone who met her.
Record scratch.
Yikes- reading children's books with prominent child abuse, both mental and physical, is not something I enjoy doing. But I will say this- the abuse is never, ever treated as a convenient plot point, or something that some fresh air in the country fixes; it's treated like the wound that it is- one that will never go away, but with the right kind of love, can become a scar one day.
I found myself raging alongside Ada at her mother, society and the world, but also frustrated with her for continuing to love her mother, and then frustrated at myself for victim-shaming a make-believe character. It's a children's book, and one that I really feel could enter the canon of classics, but I did not find it easy to read. And I think I mean that in a really good way.
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