Goodnight Mister Tom

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Biography: By the time MICHELLE MAGORIAN was eleven she had decided that the perfect life would be to spend half the year acting and the other half writing. It’s the apparently ‘heartwarming’ story of Willie Beech, who is sent from London to the countryside during the second world war. The children are then ‘evacuated’ to the Museum’s traditional ‘Village Green’ where they find themselves billeted either with Mr Tom Oakley, or at school with Mrs Hartridge or visiting Mrs Brant (an inferred character from the story).

Ah, Mister Tom, if only that were so easy for you to convince yourself with just words, because the moment eight-year-old evacuee, Willie, comes to stay at his home in Little Weirwold, Goodnight Mister Tom beautifully shows just how difficult it is for us to follow through on our own constituents.Seeing as I had read all the books we had to read and I was allowed to go into the library and choose my own book. The imagery is horrific and quite contrary to the idyllic life William experienced in Weirwold, which makes it all the more shocking and appalling when William has to relive this horror for a second time. What I did learn from this novel is that the countryside is so much more superior than the city, but for the stupidest reason in the world.

Sadness at the pain of knowing what Willie's life was before he came to live with Mister Tom and how lonely Mister Tom was before Willie came into his world. It’s about how a man who once lost so much is at last given the chance to show what a truly good man he is, what a wonderful Father he could have been if fate hadn’t robbed him of that opportunity so many years before. An absorbing interest in the history and nature of children's books led her to try her hand at writing for younger readers. He reminded me of the two little boys my mother had told me about when she had been a nurse in a London hospital during the blitz. Though initially distant, Tom is moved after discovering William's home life and treats him with kindness.

A Little Love Song ( Not a Swan in the US), her third novel, features a young woman becoming independent and finding first love in wartime Britain.