Upcoming Release Review: The War I Finally Won
***Upcoming Release!***
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
9780525429203
Age Range: 9-14
Release Date: October 3, 2017
Dial Books
Due in October, TheWar I Finally Won is the sequel I never knew we needed. Its predecessor, The War That Saved My Life, took the
kidlit world by storm in 2015, snagging a Newbery Honor the following year.
That powerhouse of a book followed Ada, a ten-year-old girl with a clubfoot who
suffers terrible abuse at the hands of her mother. Because of her bad foot, her
mother insists Ada is simple, that no one could ever love her (including
herself), and never allows Ada to leave their flat in London. But it is 1939,
there is a war on, and London is under constant threat of being bombed.
The abuse Ada suffers, both physical and psychological, sits
with her, even after she is accepted into a loving home as an evacuee. This is
where our sequel picks up, and it is Ada’s psychological state and emotional
development that I found most rewarding to read; her own inner war set against
the backdrop of World War II.
Ada’s trauma from past experiences will not allow her to feel
safe, despite the home she and her little brother Jamie have found away from
London. Her feelings of inadequacy are so vividly drawn, her constant awareness
of the words and concepts she doesn’t know overwhelming, and she still works to
keep her anger brought on by these feelings under control. It is such a battle
for her to trust, which makes it both frustrating and heartbreaking to witness
Ada’s resistance to her guardian's care. Susan is such a lovely soul
and she continues to shine as a maternal figure here. Her own history is
complicated and difficult, and she understands Ada’s plight more than Ada can possibly imagine. But Susan is endlessly patient, often anticipating when Ada may
need a word defined and doing her best to lift the weight of responsibility off
Ada’s shoulders. To give her a sense of safety. She is marvelous.
All this is happening during the horrors of Hitler’s war.
Everyone around Ada is affected. People’s loved ones are dying or missing, and
it seems every day a new tragedy occurs. But her small family sticks together
and holds each other up. Many familiar characters are back, and Bradley fleshes
them all out in a lovely fashion, giving them a substance they may not have had
in the first novel. In addition to Ada, Susan, and Jamie, the Thortons are
back: Ada’s friend Maggie, wanting to be with her family and hating being
shipped back and forth from boarding school; Lady Thorton, as intimidating a
presence as ever, but with strong insecurities of her own that are brought to
light; Lord Thorton, who flits in and out of the story, mostly working on a
secret wartime effort in London; Jonathan, the eldest child who has been off at
war, whom we finally get to meet. And a teenage girl named Ruth, whose German
presence throws the whole household into a tizzy. Except Ruth is Jewish, and
Ada is about to find out just what that means in this war.
Despite the seriousness of wartime, The War I Finally Won does not feel nearly as heavy as its
predecessor. Ada is recovering from her abuse, but we no longer actually witness this abuse, or experience her
mother’s cruelty. Bradley deals more with Ada’s psyche, and as I stated at the
beginning, this is the closure I did not realize I needed for Ada’s story.
There is much to be learned about empathy within these pages, and if you have
not yet experienced The War That Saved My Life, I highly recommend diving into it in preparation for this October.
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