Just William – William at War

Richmal Crompton's William at War is a Just William book for 8 year olds in which William decides that winning the Second World War is basically his job.

The grown-ups have air raid classes. They try on gas masks and practise bandaging each other. William thinks this sounds like tremendous fun and cannot understand why he isn't allowed. (Would you let him near a gas mask? Neither would his mother.)

So he starts his own. A.R.P. Junior Branch. Ginger paints the notice in boot blacking on a piece of his mother's hat box. AIR RADE PRECORSHUN. Entrunce fre.

The lecture lasts about four minutes. William is reading from his sister's typed notes, gets stuck on a gas that smells of pear drops, and the audience refuses to talk about anything else for the rest of the afternoon.

Then comes bandaging practice, which becomes a fight. Then gas mask practice with flower pots, which becomes a fight and a great many broken flower pots. Then something William half remembers from his brother's book about taking all your clothes off and turning a hose on.

Ginger's mother comes home at exactly the wrong moment.

That's the shape of it. His plans are always logical, and they always end with an adult standing in a doorway.

The voice is the pleasure. William talks in a rush, spelling and all, and he is completely certain he is the reasonable one. "I bet we'll save the country while they're messin' about tryin' to remember where they put their gas masks."

It's written how he says it, so "gotter" and "jus'" and "shun't". Some children love that straight away. Others find it slow going on the page and get on much better hearing it read aloud.

Worth knowing it's properly old, from the first years of the war. Blackouts, evacuation, searchlights, boys shooting down imaginary aeroplanes with air guns. And in the first chapter Henry cuts his own legs and arm with a blunt penknife so his mother will bandage him, purely to get supplies. It's tossed off in a line as an act of heroism.

None of it needs explaining away, but it helps to know it's coming.

If your reader takes to him, the very first Just William book is in the library too. That one opens with a shilling from his aunt, a trip to the cinema and a plan that seemed sensible at the time.