Private peaceful

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Heroism or cowardice? A stunning story of the First World War from a master storyteller.

Told in the voice of a young soldier, the story follows 24 hours in his life at the front during WW1, and captures his memories as he looks back over his life. Full of stunningly researched detail and engrossing atmosphere, the book leads to a dramatic and moving conclusion.

Both a love story and a deeply moving account of the horrors of the First World War, this book will reach everyone from 9 to 90.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Morpurgo's (Kensuke's Kingdom) suspenseful, ultimately tragic novel opens as 18-year-old Tommo Peaceful stays up all night "to try to remember everything." The author plants clues as to the narrator's sense of urgency with a framing structure: each chapter begins with Tommo's thoughts in the present, then flashes back to a memory. The novel divides into two parts: Tommo and his brother Charlie's lives before they enlist in WWI and during it. Before the war, their lives in rural England seem almost idyllic-except for Tommo's "terrible secret" (their forester father is killed by a falling tree when he pushes Tommo from its path). Their loving, closeknit family includes a retarded older brother and sweet Molly, a schoolmate whom Tommo and Charlie both love (and who winds up married to Charlie). Tommo recalls how his brother constantly looked after him, and readers observe Charlie's stalwart sense of loyalty and his refusal to bend to authority. How these qualities in Charlie manifest themselves, both before and during the war, play out dramatically yet realistically in both brothers' lives. On the frontlines in France, Tommo recounts the horrors of war: hellish conditions, friends killed and a cruel sergeant who hates Charlie. Readers will come away with a clear picture of a very different era. This is a moving depiction of a loving relationship between two brothers, their lives so linked that readers may wonder until the end whose fate lies in the balance. All in all, a powerful story about war's costs, and who pays the price. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7 Up-Michael Morpurgo's novel (Scholastic, 2004) is performed by Jeff Woodman with the dignity and grace befitting this story of Britain's failure during the Great War to protect its young troops from their own vengeful officers. Charlie and Thomas Peaceful, brothers separated by three years, have grown up in the laboring class as groundskeepers' sons. Thomas, age 15, has held a nearly lifelong secret shame that he was responsible for their father's accidental death. Charlie rectifies this misunderstanding during their final night together, the night before Charlie, who has been court martialed, is shot by his king's own firing squad. Thomas's memories are interspersed with his awareness of the passage of minutes during Charlie's last night, continually recalling listeners to the looming endpoint in this beautifully constructed work. Woodman gives each character a compelling voice, speeding and slowing his delivery to suit the actions and moods of each passage. Listeners will enjoy this historical fiction for the well-turned characters and steadily building plot, but also will find many finely honed details of the period embedded in a narrative that includes romance, humor, adventure, and a host of moral questions that remain lively generations later.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 7-12. In this World War I story, the terse and beautiful narrative of a young English soldier is as compelling about the world left behind as about the horrific daily details of trench warfare: the mud, rats, gas attacks, slaughter. At 15, Thomas lied about his age in order to follow his beloved older brother, Charlie, to fight in France. Now, nearly two years later, as Thomas sits waiting in the dark for the horror he knows will come at dawn, he remembers it all. Growing up as a poor farm boy in a happy family, he was always close to Charlie and to their brain-injured brother, Joe, a character Morpurgo draws with rare tenderness and truth. Thomas and Charlie even loved the same girl; Charley married her, but she writes to them both. Thomas also remembers British brutality, from the landlord who threatened the family with eviction if Charlie didn't enlist to the cruel army sergeant who tried to break Charlie's spirit. Charlie may be too perfect, almost a Christ figure, but it's Thomas' viewpoint of the brother he loves. Suspense builds right to the end, which is shocking, honest, and unforgettable. Be sure to add this to titles in the Read-alikes, War to End All Wars BKL N 1 01. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2004 Booklist

Horn Book Review

At age fifteen, Thomas Peaceful is unprepared for the horrors he encounters when he follows his older brother Charlie across the channel and into the trenches of World War I. The ever-versatile Woodman gives the two brothers and their comrades-in-arms credible working-class British accents. Female characters -- Molly (the girl both brothers have left behind) and Anna (a Belgian barmaid) -- appear only briefly but are solidly realized. What makes this audio version so eerily effective is the sense that the story is elapsing in real time: we hear the last 7 hours and 54 minutes of a boy's life tick away in 5 hours and 15 minutes of tape-time. Listeners may not want to operate heavy equipment near the end: it's not a tear-jerker, but it is deeply sad, and you may need to give yourself over to the contemplation of a vanished life. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

From England's Children's Laureate, a searing WWI-era tale of a close extended family repeatedly struck by adversity and injustice. On vigil in the trenches, 17-year-old Thomas Peaceful looks back at a childhood marked by guilt over his father's death, anger at the shabby treatment his strong-minded mother receives from the local squire and others--and deep devotion to her, to his brain-damaged brother Big Joe, and especially to his other older brother Charlie, whom he has followed into the army by lying about his age. Weaving telling incidents together, Morpurgo surrounds the Peacefuls with mean-spirited people at home, and devastating wartime experiences on the front, ultimately setting readers up for a final travesty following Charlie's refusal of an order to abandon his badly wounded brother. Themes and small-town class issues here may find some resonance on this side of the pond, but the particular cultural and historical context will distance the story from American readers--particularly as the pace is deliberate, and the author's hints about where it's all heading are too rare and subtle to create much suspense. (Fiction. 11-13, adult) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.