In the Same Boat

by Kitty Barne, Ruth Gervis (Illustrator)

Two schoolgirls - Polish Antosia and English Bridget - are thrown together on the boat evacuating them to the UK during the Second World War, and find themselves attending the same boarding school.

Genres: World War II

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Marion Catherine "Kitty" Barne was a British children's author and screenwriter, born and brought up in Sussex, England. She studied at the Royal College of Music. In 1912, she married Eric Streatfeild, a cousin of another children's author, Noel Streatfeild. During World War II, she was a member of the Women's Voluntary Service, responsible for helping children evacuated to Sussex.

Barne won the 1940 Carnegie Medal for her book Visitors from London, which tells the story of children evacuated to Sussex during World War II. She is best remembered today for her pony books Rosina Copper and its sequel Rosina and Son, about the true story of an Argentine polo pony mare. She also wrote some nonfiction books, including a biography of Elizabeth Fry (1950) and a history of the Girl Guides. Barne died in 1961.

Reviews

[Louise Culmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

story of a Polish girl and an English girl who meet on a ship going to England during Ww2. The ship is torpedoed, and the Polish girl insists on being transferred to the lifeboat her English friend is in, hence the title. On arriving in England, the Polish girl is sent to the same school as her English friend, and infects all the girls in her form with her passion for Polush history and folklore as she blazes her way through the school. the book does not have a conventional happy ending, you don't know what will happen to the passionate polish patriot heroine, she faces an uncertain fate. The weakness in the book for me is that the intense heroine makes the English girls who surround her seem insipid by contrast, and I could have wished the other characters were a bit more interesting.