The Day War Came
Illustrator
Candlewick Press
Publisher
Candlewick Press
Publication Year
2018
ISBN
9781536201734
Pages
32 pages
Genre
realism
Format
picture book
Item Type
Fiction
Annotation
The day war came there were flowers on the windowsill and my father sang my baby brother back to sleep. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, after a morning of studying tadpoles and drawing birds at school, war came to your town and turned it to rubble. Imagine if you lost everything and everyone, and you had to make a dangerous journey all alone. Imagine that there was no welcome at the end, and no room for you to even take a seat at school. And then a child, just like you, gave you something ordinary but so very, very precious. In lyrical, deeply affecting language, Nicola Davies’s text combines with Rebecca Cobb’s expressive illustrations to evoke the experience of a child who sees war take away all that she knows.
Grade Level
K-3; 3-5
Diversity Topics
Family Relationships; Culture/Ethnicity; Homelessness; Immigrants and Refugees; transient; no home; displaced; refugee; migration; family separation;
Main Character
female child
Race/Ethnicities
Undetermined
Awards
Cybils Awards, 2018, Finalist, Fiction Picture Book
Jane Addams Children's Book Award, 2019, Honor Book, Books For Younger Children
West Australian Young Readers' Book Award (WAYRBA), 2019, Short List, Picture Book
Keywords
flowers; tadpoles; ash; thunder; confusion; chaos; despair; hope; chair; courage; kindness
Diversity Impact
direct
STARS Citation
Davies, Nicola, "The Day War Came" (2018). Diverse Families. 2118.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/2118