By Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Ada is ten, born with a clubfoot, and her mother keeps her hidden and shamed inside a London flat. When children are evacuated ahead of the bombing, Ada slips away to the countryside and slowly finds the life she was told she'd never have.
Ada is ten and has never once been outside. She was born with a twisted foot, and her mother is ashamed of her, so she's kept Ada locked in a one-room London flat her whole life, hitting her, calling her names, shutting her in a cabinet when she's angry. Then the war comes and children are sent out of the city to the countryside. Ada's little brother Jamie is going, and Ada secretly forces her bad foot to hold her weight, one step at a time, until she can walk well enough to go too. They land with Susan Smith, a woman who says outright that she doesn't want them. And there, slowly and not without pain, Ada learns things she was never allowed: how to ride a pony, how to read, how to believe someone might actually keep her. Then her mother comes back.
I'd hand this to a child who's ready for a bigger feeling but still wants the reading to stay manageable. It's longer than the books before it, but the chapters keep moving, and Ada's voice, guarded and sharp and slowly thawing, carries you straight through. The bombs are the smaller danger here. The real story is a girl learning that the shame was never hers to carry, that she was never the thing wrong with her family. It asks more of a reader emotionally than the earlier books, which is why it sits in the middle of the climb.