A review by mat_tobin
Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

5.0

‘In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth’
S. Sassoon in 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'

When I first saw that Kate Saunders had taken Nesbit’s classic trilogy and used the characters and place to tell her own story in commemoration of the First World War, I point-blank refused to touch it. To me, Nesbit IS the pioneer of children’s literature as we see it today. She was a brave, intelligent woman unafraid to argue her ideas in a world dominated by men and one of the few writers for children during the Victorian and Edwardian period who decided that stories for children would be fun. No lessons, no underlining moral, no didactic tone relating to what children should and should not do. She is the one who started the revolutionary change of children being encouraged to read for pleasure. She is my literary hero.

However, Mick Wiggins’ humblingly warm cover and the prospect of meeting the psammead again was too much so I picked it up. To my joy, I found that not only was Saunders a Nesbit fan and praised the influence she has had on the literature of today (she mentions that the Narnia chronicles would never had happened were it not for her work) but I also found that her writing sounded exactly like Nesbit’s: and I mean exactly! It was a surreal and uncanny experience but by the fourth page she had my heart and my trust that she was going to do something special with this story; embracing Nesbit’s style, sense of adventure and, most impressively, the characters’ voices and nature. It was as if I was back with Cyril, Anthea, Bobs, Jane and the Lamb – albeit more grown up and with a new sibling in the fray: Edie.

It is through Edie, Saunders’ addition to the Pemberton’s, that we experience much of the story. Although the Lamb also starts off young, it is Edie’s youthfulness and joy in the extraordinary that keeps the bond between fantasy and reality strong. With the other children growing up and less interested in their old friend, especially since he isn’t quite what he used to be, the exploring and adventures are left to the two youngest. But adventures with the psammead and no longer the same: there has been a change.

Something has happened to the psammead and it is for the Edie and the others to unravel the reasoning as to why he does not have the power he once wielded. The dawn of a Great War is occurring throughout Europe and such events stir unwelcome memories from the sand-fairy’s past. It is from this point in that I found that tonally, this is not a Nesbit story: it’s Saunders’ and what she does with these characters in a dark and unsettling situation is deeply clever and touching.
From Cyril’s first letter from the front, I felt a deep sense of foreboding and uncertainty for the children and their fairy friend: I felt that they and the story sat poised a knife-edge of great change. Not only in what their future held in relation to the great war but also, to an equal extent, in relation to departing the wonderful age of innocence that Nesbit had let them experience in her own trilogies.

Saunders executes her story so well. She builds cleverly on the Psammead’s own past and uses it as a parallel to trying to understand the atrocities of war that are going on around the family. She brings in love, marriage, loss and the gradual shift from innocence into experience with such tenderness that you can help feel that the story is a swan song to a past age which the reader and the children can never quite return to. It has an ending that is deeply touching and right.

I can fully say that I think Saunders handled the story well but I do implore those that read it to at least visit the original first. Share in the adventures of the children and their irascible sand-fairy in all its comedy, naivety and joy before taking a final waltz with them in this touching and memorable story.