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Lizzie and Margaret Rose
London, 1940. Bombs are falling and ten-year-old Margaret Rose survives a deadly raid, but her family home is destroyed. In faraway Townsville in Queensland, her aunt is ready to take her in, although her eleven-year-old cousin Lizzie is not so sure. But first there is a long and dangerous voyage to a strange country, also at war. Margaret Rose knows it’s not going to be easy, and Lizzie is not about to make it any easier.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 14, 2021
oddly comforting all throughout primary school.
April 28, 2020
I often take a ridiculously long time to get around reading something I feel is going to be good. Rather like leaving the roast potatoes (my favourite part) to the very end of a roast dinner. Then suddenly a book will call to me, ready to be read. I believe this way invites a more organic reading experience. And what a book at such a time!
Lizzie and Margaret Rose is a gripping middle grade novel by accomplished historic children's author, Pamela Rushby set in the early years of World War II. Pamela wastes no words on superlative mundane description rather her supremely defined characters are chiseled from the world in which they exist. From the shrapnel strewn streets of London to the balmy coastal suburbs of Townsville, Rushby's talent for honing emotion from action allows readers to engage head on with ten-year-old Margaret Rose and her eleven-year-old Australian cousin, at least this reader did in a way that required the occasional swiping away of tears.
When English lass, Margaret Rose's family is wiped out during the London Blitz, she is eventually sent off to Australia to live with her immigrant Aunt and Uncle. The long and convoluted journey from England via Singapore to Australia is fraught with anxiety and peril. The threat of enemy ambush from above and below threatens their every nautical mile. Margaret Rose is forced to adapt, and adjust to conditions, weather, people and emotions that are alien to her yet for all the strangeness, a certain calm befalls her at sea. She is 'in between' the past and the unknown future and for Margaret Rose, this feels the surest place to be.
Ten thousand odd miles away, larrikin Lizzie enjoys a life less burdened by the presence of war. She is able to frolic in tropical waters after school and visit the 'pictures' on a Saturday afternoon. Her main concerns are watching out for sharks and making her weekly sixpence stretch from one Saturday to the next. The arrival of her foreign cousin changes everything; the bedding arrangements for one. Lizzie's nose is not just put out because she has to share her room with Margaret Rose; this newcomer dilutes her mother's attention and has managed to impress both her principal and arch rivals the Gallagher boys.
As Lizzie's and Margaret Rose's relationship continues to bristle, by mid 1942 the war intensifies. Unbelievably, Townsville soon finds itself digging trenches, building air raid shelters and enacting drills. It's a nightmare of bad memories for Margaret Rose who worries that if her own family cannot keep her safe, the authorities may yet again send her elsewhere. If she can't find peace with her cousin and prove that she really belongs with this family, she is not sure she will ever feel safe again. And all the while, the Japanese bombers roar and whine ever closer.
Rushby injects a huge amount of historic fact and detail into this swiftly paced tale that essentially follows Margaret Rose from one fraught place of being to another. What I found profoundly coincidental (because I happened to read this during the crisis of Covid-19) were the parallels between the feelings of uncertainty, fear, bewilderment, and resignation with those the whole world is once again feeling now in the 21st Century not to mention the similarities between social interactions, shortages of essential items, and the psychological distress that results from such extraordinary and dramatic, life-threatening change.
There's probably a technical term of such congruities, a sort of self-prophetic circumstance. Yet I'm still shocked that I'm able to draw comparisons such as these, in my lifetime. I never thought I'd have to.
This though, is what gives Lizzie and Margaret Rose double relevance. It is not just a stirring story about a history middle school students have no firsthand knowledge of, it is also quite be chance, a story that they can now attribute actual feelings, actions and outcomes to. Fluky but so very fundamental for understanding the greater world in which they live.
Top marks.
Lizzie and Margaret Rose is a gripping middle grade novel by accomplished historic children's author, Pamela Rushby set in the early years of World War II. Pamela wastes no words on superlative mundane description rather her supremely defined characters are chiseled from the world in which they exist. From the shrapnel strewn streets of London to the balmy coastal suburbs of Townsville, Rushby's talent for honing emotion from action allows readers to engage head on with ten-year-old Margaret Rose and her eleven-year-old Australian cousin, at least this reader did in a way that required the occasional swiping away of tears.
When English lass, Margaret Rose's family is wiped out during the London Blitz, she is eventually sent off to Australia to live with her immigrant Aunt and Uncle. The long and convoluted journey from England via Singapore to Australia is fraught with anxiety and peril. The threat of enemy ambush from above and below threatens their every nautical mile. Margaret Rose is forced to adapt, and adjust to conditions, weather, people and emotions that are alien to her yet for all the strangeness, a certain calm befalls her at sea. She is 'in between' the past and the unknown future and for Margaret Rose, this feels the surest place to be.
Ten thousand odd miles away, larrikin Lizzie enjoys a life less burdened by the presence of war. She is able to frolic in tropical waters after school and visit the 'pictures' on a Saturday afternoon. Her main concerns are watching out for sharks and making her weekly sixpence stretch from one Saturday to the next. The arrival of her foreign cousin changes everything; the bedding arrangements for one. Lizzie's nose is not just put out because she has to share her room with Margaret Rose; this newcomer dilutes her mother's attention and has managed to impress both her principal and arch rivals the Gallagher boys.
As Lizzie's and Margaret Rose's relationship continues to bristle, by mid 1942 the war intensifies. Unbelievably, Townsville soon finds itself digging trenches, building air raid shelters and enacting drills. It's a nightmare of bad memories for Margaret Rose who worries that if her own family cannot keep her safe, the authorities may yet again send her elsewhere. If she can't find peace with her cousin and prove that she really belongs with this family, she is not sure she will ever feel safe again. And all the while, the Japanese bombers roar and whine ever closer.
Rushby injects a huge amount of historic fact and detail into this swiftly paced tale that essentially follows Margaret Rose from one fraught place of being to another. What I found profoundly coincidental (because I happened to read this during the crisis of Covid-19) were the parallels between the feelings of uncertainty, fear, bewilderment, and resignation with those the whole world is once again feeling now in the 21st Century not to mention the similarities between social interactions, shortages of essential items, and the psychological distress that results from such extraordinary and dramatic, life-threatening change.
There's probably a technical term of such congruities, a sort of self-prophetic circumstance. Yet I'm still shocked that I'm able to draw comparisons such as these, in my lifetime. I never thought I'd have to.
This though, is what gives Lizzie and Margaret Rose double relevance. It is not just a stirring story about a history middle school students have no firsthand knowledge of, it is also quite be chance, a story that they can now attribute actual feelings, actions and outcomes to. Fluky but so very fundamental for understanding the greater world in which they live.
Top marks.
May 14, 2017
Another great read from Pamela Rushby. Interesting bits of factual information. Even I wAs surprised that Townsville was attacked by the Japanese. During WW 2. Probably suitable for years 5&6.
January 31, 2020
I enjoyed this. I liked the two perspectives and learnt about Townsville during the war. It felt well researched and had a good storyline.
October 13, 2023
Trigger warnings: Near-death experience, military violence and war themes, World War II, displacement
6.5/10, this was an interesting read and the first book I've read from Pamela Rushby and she wrote an ok story about World War II but nothing remarkable and I've read other war books better than this one since then. An interesting aspect about this novel is that the main characters were named after historical figures notably members of the royal family like Princess Margaret Rose and the then Princess Elizabeth but the latter figure was living up until a few months ago and she was the Queen of the United Kingdom for 70 years and now her son Charles is on the throne so it felt very surreal to be reading a book mentioning her when she passed on. That being said the story was fine and reflected the time period well enough but I could've used some more immersion into the setting but to compensate the character dynamic between Lizzie and Margaret Rose, hence the title, was rather interesting to look at. At the beginning of the story Margaret lived in London during the Blitz in 1940 when her house was bombed and she had to move to Australia and I liked the fact that she took a ship and it stopped at multiple locations like Cape Town, South Africa and Ceylon which is now Sri Lanka and I got a glimpse of the setting but it was only a few pages long and she arrived at Queensland where she met her cousin Lizzie for the first time. The story wasn't that cohesive at the beginning due to it being split between two main characters and it only got together towards the latter half of the book but Lizzie was frustrating to read at first due to her mistreating her cousin and shouting when things didn't go her way but she experienced character development and got along eventually and Margaret even wanted to stay in Queensland until the war was over but the story ended before it did which was a strange choice but I think the author did this to keep it short and not drag on for too long. If you like war stories set in the United Kingdom and Australia pick this one but there are better stories than this such as the ones Alan Gratz wrote like Refugee and Allies.
6.5/10, this was an interesting read and the first book I've read from Pamela Rushby and she wrote an ok story about World War II but nothing remarkable and I've read other war books better than this one since then. An interesting aspect about this novel is that the main characters were named after historical figures notably members of the royal family like Princess Margaret Rose and the then Princess Elizabeth but the latter figure was living up until a few months ago and she was the Queen of the United Kingdom for 70 years and now her son Charles is on the throne so it felt very surreal to be reading a book mentioning her when she passed on. That being said the story was fine and reflected the time period well enough but I could've used some more immersion into the setting but to compensate the character dynamic between Lizzie and Margaret Rose, hence the title, was rather interesting to look at. At the beginning of the story Margaret lived in London during the Blitz in 1940 when her house was bombed and she had to move to Australia and I liked the fact that she took a ship and it stopped at multiple locations like Cape Town, South Africa and Ceylon which is now Sri Lanka and I got a glimpse of the setting but it was only a few pages long and she arrived at Queensland where she met her cousin Lizzie for the first time. The story wasn't that cohesive at the beginning due to it being split between two main characters and it only got together towards the latter half of the book but Lizzie was frustrating to read at first due to her mistreating her cousin and shouting when things didn't go her way but she experienced character development and got along eventually and Margaret even wanted to stay in Queensland until the war was over but the story ended before it did which was a strange choice but I think the author did this to keep it short and not drag on for too long. If you like war stories set in the United Kingdom and Australia pick this one but there are better stories than this such as the ones Alan Gratz wrote like Refugee and Allies.
April 23, 2017
WWII experienced through the eyes of a young girl. Set first in London during the blitz and then in Australia.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews