A Place to Hang The Moon (Kate Albus)

 

I loved this book! I ended up reading it in a 24 hour period. It was a Children's Lit book club book but I kept putting off reading it because I figured it'd be a quick read plus I read a review that if you've read The War That Saved My Life, it's pretty much the same - which I have read. However, that reviewer was wrong! I don't think they're the same at all. 

I loved how the children in this story loved to read. It was really what led them to finding a new family after being orphaned and then having their grandmother die. Reading really does save lives.

The title comes from a saying that William tells his siblings his mom used to say - that her children could hang the moon, meaning that they were the most amazing humans. The children look for someone who feels the same way about them and in the end the person who does become their new family actualy ends up saying this very thing by chance.

p. 25 The first words of a new book are so delicious - like the first taste of a cookie fresh from the oven and not yet proerly cooled.

p. 102 "What about Anne of Green Gables?" she asked.
"Is it another orphan story?" Anna asked.
The librarian chuckled. "I suppose there are rather a lot of orphan stories out there."
"Why do grown-ups write so many of them?" William asked.
"I hadn't really thought about it, "Mrs. Muller confessed. "Perhaps they think children fancy the notion of living on their own, without adults to tell them what to do. It's quite daft, if you think about it."

p. 243 "I believe it was the poet, Mr. Yeats, who said that the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow and sharper?" 

Setting: June 1940 in England

The Pearce family: Edmund (a bit of a trouble-maker type child), the youngest Anna, and William, who is 12.
Mrs Collins - their housekeeper
Harold Engersoll "does not have that gift for explain complex things to children"
Frances
Miss Caw
Mrs. Warren 
Ms Norton
Mrs. Griffith
Mrs Mueller

I looked up Operation Pied Piper and found some really interesting information. I shared this video, called The Mothers Who Waved Goodbye, at our book club meeting:

Goodreads says:
Set against the backdrop of World War II, Anna, Edmund, and William are evacuated from London to live in the countryside, bouncing from home to home in search of a permanent family.

It is 1940 and Anna, 9, Edmund, 11, and William, 12, have just lost their grandmother. Unfortunately, she left no provision for their guardianship in her will. Her solicitor comes up with a preposterous plan: he will arrange for the children to join a group of schoolchildren who are being evacuated to a village in the country, where they will live with families for the duration of the war. He also hopes that whoever takes the children on might end up willing to adopt them and become their new family--providing, of course, that the children can agree on the choice.

Moving from one family to another, the children suffer the cruel trickery of foster brothers, the cold realities of outdoor toilets, and the hollowness of empty tummies. They seek comfort in the village lending library, whose kind librarian, Nora Muller, seems an excellent candidate--except that she has a German husband whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Nevertheless, Nora's cottage is a place of bedtime stories and fireplaces, of vegetable gardens and hot, milky tea. Most important, it's a place where someone thinks they all three hung the moon. Which is really all you need in a mom, if you think about it.

Fans of The War That Saved My Life and other World War II fiction will find an instant classic in A Place to Hang the Moon.