Catching Falling Stars

Karen McCombie's Catching Falling Stars is a wartime story for 11 year olds about a girl who has always looked after her little brother, and now has to do it somewhere nobody wants them.

What happens

Glory Gilbert is thirteen and lives in north London, where the whole street smells of toffee from the sweet factory. When every other child in her class is evacuated, Glory and her brother Rich stay behind. Mum and Dad say they couldn't bear to part with them. Glory knows the real reason.

Rich is nervy, and different enough to be picked on. Nobody thought he'd cope with a house full of strangers. He's six at the start and he's lovely. He plays hopscotch with his felt duck, and when he's scared he says her name three times, "Glory, Glory, Glory". (You hear that a LOT, and it gets you every single time.)

A year on, the bombs arrive. After that, Glory, Rich and Mum take two rattly buses out to Thorntree, a village with cabbages growing on the green and white butterflies everywhere. The farm that was meant to take them can't. Two boys on the gate snigger. A skinny girl at the pub window stares at the scar on Glory's cheek.

The only person with room is Miss Saunders. She's tall and owlish behind wire spectacles, she keeps herself to herself, and she very clearly doesn't want them.

Glory tells the story herself, in the here and now, so you're right beside her as she fibs brightly to keep Rich calm while her own tummy's in knots. Who hasn't smiled at a little one while feeling sick inside? She's brave and fiercely protective. She also makes up her mind about people very fast.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The air raid is properly frightening. The family's shelter is hit, their grumpy upstairs neighbour Mrs Mann is killed, and Glory digs Rich out of the rubble with her bare hands. Their burns and bruises are described as they heal (this all happens in the opening chapters, so it isn't a spoiler).

For a child who worries about war or losing people, that could be a lot. If your reader already loves a wartime story and can hold something sad, it's done with real care, and so much of the book's warmth comes out of it.

What to read next

If they'd like another girl sent away from bombed London to live with someone she's never met, try The Return of the Railway Children. Edie has to leave her daring mother behind for an aunt in Yorkshire, and she's sure the aunt won't want her either.