It is odd, but for all this book made me cry, I laughed too, and it left me happy. It very much IS a feel good book.

For all the bleak things that the anecdotes in these letters tell you about, there is warmth and humanity underpinning them. Through bombings, gun enforced curfews, children sent away for years, captives and capturers starving alongside, and concentration camps, there are books, and there is friendship, and dignity, and courage.

I don't know that it is a perfect book, or even that the plot is that tight (what plot), but there is a bunch of lovely and strange, and even ridiculous, characters being good friends and sharing the good and the bad, all because of books and one absent woman. And that's good. It feels cathartic, and lovely. It's... restorative.

I quite enjoyed the experience and I'm glad I took the recommendation.

And hey, I got a new favorite poem, because of this first stanza quoted (and I don't usually even enjoy poetry much, but this one resonates)

IS it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;

This is charming all around, and it's making me all teary for the profound love of literature and forever coming back idea of it as a raft in times of darkness.

It seems to me the less he said, the more beauty he made. Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is, ‘The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.’ I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, planeload after planeload of them—and come off ships down in the harbour! All I could think of was, Damn them, damn them, over and over again. If I could have thought the words, ‘The bright day is done, and we are for the dark,’ I’d have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance—instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.

This is a lovely piece of epistolary and historical fiction that focuses on the German occupation of the (British) Channel Islands during WWII, a part of that historical time period that I knew little about.

It's also got a delightful heroine, thoughtful friendships, a simmering romance, and is basically a love letter to books as well.

Worth the read. 

Ivy and Bean is a good transitional fiction book with supportive illustrations on every page. The dynamic between Ivy and Bean is realistic and irresistible. It's not a series I'm likely to read more of, but kids who enjoy the first volume have several other books in the series available to them.

Coraline, the Graphic Novel by Neil Gaiman is on sale for $1.99! I don't know how long it will be on sale and what part of the world this sale is for. I thought I would pass along the news. Here

Also anyone with kids (or kids at heart like me!) The first three Ivy & Bean books by Annie Barrows are on sale for $.99 each! Number 1, Number 2, Number 3 They are $3 after the first 3.