Review by Imogen 
This book was set in World War Two and was about the evacuation of children from towns to rural areas so that the children would not be hurt by the bombs from Germany. The book was accurate because it showed how towns would be bombed and how it was so dangerous for the children living in the towns. I know that Operation Pied Piper began on 1st September 1939 and 1.5 million people were moved where it was safe in the countryside and 800,000 of this was children. The book was interesting because it was all about how these 4 girls were evacuated and sent away from their homes and they had no idea where they were going to live while the war was going on. In addition they had to wear gas masks to school and sometimes the gas masks were tied to their coats. This was also interesting because it has helped me with my own knowledge and this book has helped me in my own school in my history class. I knew a few things about this time period beforehand, but this book has really helped me with my own knowledge and understanding about World War 2 and how and what happened to the children and how they were evacuated and how they must have felt during this.

I learnt from this book that if the parents of the child couldn’t take care of them, they would be sent to an English boarding school and would be taken care of there. When the children saw the Indian princess, they were shocked at her appearance because they expected her to have a modern outfit, but she was wearing brown long socks and a black and white dress. The boarding school was old fashioned and had thousands of children and of course was very loud. In addition, I learnt that on some weekends the children would be let out of the boarding school and would be able to visit their parents and if they couldn’t visit their parents, they would have a home with a temporary family to live with.

My favourite character out of this book is Noor because she is an Indian princess, and she has a very admirable imagination because she thought that she saw a fairy and I really enjoyed her imaginative personality. The least attractive character is Gwen because she has a bland personality, and we don’t know much about her character, and she is a very dark character who likes everything very dull and gloomy.

The one thing that really stood out to me about this book was Noor’s wonderful imagination and the fact that she didn’t care how old she was she still believed in fairies or whatever she wanted to believe in she would believe it no matter what it would be. This really inspired me to just be yourself no matter what other people think of you. I thought that the children needed a lot of empathy and showed a lot of resilience even though they were hundreds of miles away from home and separated from their families, they just kept their heads tall and were very resilient and I am not sure if we had a war whether we could be as resilient as the children in this book.