Ellen Allen Writes

John Boyne’s book, Stay Where You Are and Then Leave is not meant for adults – it’s a little too simplistic – but it’s a really thoughtful introduction for a younger YA audience to World War 1. It follows little Alfie (aged 5) and how he deals with his Dad’s departure to fight on the first day of World War 1 and his realisation four years later that his Dad has actually been injured and is very sick. Boyne wrote The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas about the friendship between two boys at a concentration camp (one the son of a Nazi officer and the other an inmate) and he shows the same thoughtfulness with difficult issues in this book. I was tearful within ten minutes of picking it up; it definitely pulls at you a little but in a gentle, inoffensive way. Definitely one to be re-read with my daughter in a couple of years time.