Listen To The Moon by Michael Morpurgo

Fourteen year old  Alfred (Alfie) Wheatcroft and his parents, Jim and Mary live in Veronica Farm on the island of Bryher, one of the Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall. 

Although Alfie's mother,  Mary warned him to go to school, Alfie is there waiting when his father Jim arrives at his boat on Green Bay. The two spend time fishing for mackerel but when the fishing is poor, Alfie suggests they go in closer to St. Helen's an isolated island where an old quarantine house, Pest House, sits abandoned. Alfie's father is not keen to do this but allows Alfie to row them in near the sandy beach to try their luck. Both Alfie and his father hear what seems to be a child crying. Scared, they beach their boat and soon discover that they are hearing a child, crying and coughing and it is coming from the Pest House.

Alfie discovers a pale, sick child hiding in the fireplace of the ruined Pest House, shivering and wrapped in a blanket. Terrified, the young girl tries to run away but collapses. Alfie and his father put the girl in the boat and take her back to Green Bay. They are met by Mary and many others who live on the island. Mary orders someone to send for Dr. Crow on St. Mary's. 

The girl momentarily awakens and whispers "Lucy" leaving those around her to believe that she is named Lucy. Lucy is taken to the Wheatcroft home at Veronica Farm. Dr. Crow encourages Lucy to eat and drink as she is feverish and dehydrated.  Alfie's cousin, Dave Bishop visits after the doctor leaves and tells Jim and Mary Wheatcroft that he went over to St. Helen's and found a grey sodden blanket and a bedraggled teddy bear. The blanket has the name Wilhelm on it and immediately Cousin Dave jumps to the conclusion that Lucy is German and a "lousy Hun". Alfie's mother threatens Cousin Dave, telling him he is to tell no one about the name on the blanket. He reluctantly promises.

At first the Wheatcrofts believe that Lucy doesn't speak because she might be German and therefore cannot understand English. However Alfie believes that Lucy does understand but for some reason cannot speak. It is June 1915 and with no end to the war in sight, the islanders are growing more apprehensive especially as the papers are filled with "daily reports of ever mounting casualties, those dreadful long lists in the papers of the killed, the wounded and the missing in action." The Isles of Scilly have had the bodies of four drowned Royal Navy sailors washed ashore in recent months. Lucy Lost as she is now referred to, continues to live with Alfie's family while people speculate on who she was and how she came to be on St. Helen's.

All of the Wheatcrofts must deal with harassment from the islanders. Jim is teased about finding mermaids while Mary must fend off constant questions about Lucy when she visits her twin brother Billy. Mary goes every day to visit Uncle Billy as he is called. She rescued him from the County Asylum in Bodmin where he was located after going missing following the death of his wife and baby. Billy who doesn't speak or interact much with the islanders, lives in the boat house on Green Bay. Most of his time is spent restoring an old ship, the Hispaniola which he intends to sail some day. Alfie too is quizzed by the teachers at school and is taunted by Cousin Dave's son, Zebediah Bishop. Eventually Alfie has had enough and the two fight and are given detention from the mean-spirited headmaster, Mr. Beagley. During detention Alfie learns that Cousin Dave has broken his promise not to tell about the blanket with the German writing on it.

Despite Lucy's silence, Alfie enjoys her company. He spends time talking to her in the hopes that she will gradually begin to talk again. Lucy however seems unable to respond. Dr. Crow is concerned that Lucy has been deeply traumatized, leaving her unable to speak. He believes that if she does not recover they will have to send her to the mental hospital.  He insists that the Wheatcrofts attempt to get Lucy out of bed and to that end he brings his gramophone. 

The gramophone seems to draw Lucy's attention, so much so that she begins to play Dr. Crow's records constantly and is especially fond of Mozart's Andante Grazioso. Unfortunately this does not help her to talk. Lucy however gradually becomes more involved in life at the Wheatcrofts; she waits for Alfie to return from school and begins to accompany him in the morning when he opens up the henhouse. 

Soon she manages to attend school, at first reluctant to cross the Tresco Channel in a boat, taking Peg, "a whiskery old horse" that no one was able to ride, across. Even when threatened by the Headmaster "Beastly Beagley", Lucy doesn't speak. But when she sees the piano, and plays Mozart, Miss Nightingale, the piano teacher is stunned. 

When word gets out that Lucy Lost was found with a blanket with the name Wilhelm on it, people are certain Lucy must be "a lousy Hun". This leads the villagers to treat Alfie's family and Lucy with much cruelty. The Wheatcroft family are considered "Fritz lovers" and are shunned and ostracized. The islanders stop buying Jim's fish and Mary's eggs. The are shunned even at church. The situation reaches a crisis point when the Wheatcroft's door is painted with "Remember the Lusitania" and rocks are thrown through Lucy's bedroom window. 

Dr. Crow suggests that Alfie take Lucy back to St. Helen's and the Pest House in the hopes that this will help her remember and to speak. Against the advice of his mother, Alfie does this and it does seem to help as Lucy begins to speak a few words. But it is Uncle Billy and the Hispaniola and a second tragedy that finally leads Lucy to reveal her identity and what happened to her only a few months earlier.

Discussion

Listen to the Moon is set in the summer of 1915 on the Isles of Scilly off the Cornwall coast. What will someday be known as The Great War is only ten months along. Like most people back in 1914, the islanders believed the war would be over by Christmas of that year, but by May 1915, the number of dead is quickly mounting, with no end in sight. The Isles have casualties among their own and hatred of the Germans or anything German is high. One of those casualties is the sinking of the ocean liner, the Lusitania on May 7, 2015 by the German U-boat SM U-20 in the North Atlantic. 

The Lusitania was one of the largest ocean liners traveling the Atlantic in 1915. The ship was traveling from New York to Liverpool carrying 1959 passengers and around one hundred-seventy-three tons of ammunition when she was torpedoed. She sank in about eighteen minutes. Over one thousand people died in the sinking which happened off the Old Head of Kinsale. Prior to the voyage, the German embassy placed notices in American newspapers warning of the risk of ships being sunk in the waters around Britain. The sinking created an great deal of animosity towards Germany and the German people.

The novel offers a fictional story of Merry MacIntyre who along with her mother, was on her way to England to visit her soldier-father. Merry's father was originally from Toronto but like many of his generation decided to fight for his ancestral homeland, Britain, in the First World War. By the time the war began, Merry's father and mother lived in New York. With her father wounded and stationed at a hospital in England, Merry and her mother decided to travel there to visit him.  They book passage on the Lusitania which is torpedoed and sinks quickly. Merry and a younger girl, Celia are placed into a life boat.

When the life boat they are in is swamped, Merry manages to swim with Celia on her back to the floating grand piano from the ship. Celia dies and her body floats off the piano. Merry is rescued by U-boat 19 and a kindly sailor, Wilhelm gives her the blanket his mother made for him, with his name on it. The U-boat is not able to return to Germany with a child, so they set Merry ashore on the coast, not realizing that the island is deserted. Eventually, after several days, Merry is discovered by Alfie and his father. 

Morpurgo begins his story with the grandson of Merry MacIntyre who has pieced together the story of his grandma whom he describes as having come out of the sea and informs the reader that he has told it as dictated to him. It begins with Alfie and his family set in Scilly Isles in May, 1915. The narrator then switches to Merry in New York, March 1915 who provides the background to how she and her mother come to be on the Lusitania. The narrator alternates throughout the story, from Alfie in third person, to Dr. Crow in the form of his journal entries and first person narrative, to Mr. Beagley. After a short chapter by Merry's grandson, she concludes the novel with her perspective, recorded in New York in 1997. 

Listen To The Moon is quite long for a juvenile novel at 444 pages and the pacing is sometimes inconsistent. In some ways it is a complex novel, with many narrators, a story within a story, that begins in 1915 and ends in 1997. 

Morpurgo does his usual excellent job of creating the setting for the novel which is the Isles of Scilly. A map of the isles would have been helpful in orienting young readers, who outside of the United Kingdom, are probably not familiar with this part of the world.

The simple life of the people is well portrayed as are the attitudes common in the early twentieth century. The anti-German sentiment of the islanders is a main focus of the storyline and is directed towards the young girl, "Lucy Lost" who comes to the island community and the family who generously takes her in. At times the bad treatment of the Wheatcrofts seems overdone, perhaps to demonstrate that such emotions are often not rational and at the time were very intense.

The people of Scilly have a reputation for risking their lives to save sailors who are shipwrecked. Capitan Klausen of the U boat that sank the Lusitania tells Merry that he rescued her because of the courage and kindness of the islanders from Scilly who rowed out to the wreck of the Schiller many years ago to save his uncle. As a result, "...the order was given at the beginning of the war that no German warships will ever attack any boats of any kind around the Isles of Scilly." This same act of courage and kindness is repeated months later when Uncle Billy rescues a German sailor, Wilhelm Kreuz who had saved Merry, from his wrecked U boat. When their connection becomes known, the islanders are forced to reconsider their views on Germans. As Dr. Crow writes in his journal, "Anyone who knows what he did for Lucy - or, as I should now say, for Merry - will, I trust, remember him as a good German, a kind German - one, I am sure, of many. Even in the midst of this terrible conflict, we should all do so well to remember that, and remember him."

Morpurgo's description of the torpedoing and sinking of the Lusitania, experienced through the eyes of Merry MacIntyre are very well done. The author effectively portrays the horror and trauma a young Merry experiences during the chaos of the rapidly sinking ship which was listing so badly many of the lifeboats could not be launched. Placed into a lifeboat with a small child, Celia, Merry is traumatized by seeing her mother in her distinct Chinese dressing gown, floating facedown in the ocean. She must also watch people down. "I had to turn away. I could not bear to see any more. But I could not turn away from the screaming, from the wailing of the small children desperate for lost mothers and fathers."

Later on Merry tries to distract Celia "...to take her mind and mine away from everything that had happened, from the dying that was going on all around us, from the horror of all we were witnessing. The ocean itself seemed to be writhing and moaning in despair, crying out in fear, wailing in pity."

Readers also get the perspective of the German sailors who torpedo boats but must also watch and listen to the sailors dying. Seeman Wilhelm Kreuz tells Dr. Crow that "It is a terrible thing for a sailor to sink a ship, to watch it go beneath the waves, to see men die. You can hear them shout, hear them scream. For a sailor to kill a sailor is like killing a brother. There were many brothers on the Lusitania, and mothers and fathers, and little children like Lucy. We could save only this one. So we did."

The novel's unusual title is a reference to the practice Merry's father had involving the moon. He told her before leaving for the war in Europe, "Whenever I see the moon, Merry,... I will think of you and sing our Mozart tune. You do the same, so that whenever we look up at the moon, wherever we are, we shall listen to the moon, and hear one another and think of one another. Promise me." Later on, in a letter written to her as he's recuperating in a hospital named Bearwood in England, "I sing to the moon and I listen to the moon, as I promised." 

 

Listen To The Moon is a wonderful story, that offers young readers plenty of themes to consider: when is war just, the morality of submarine war as waged by the Germans in World War I, identity, racism during war, post traumatic stress in soldiers and civilians as a result of war. Morpurgo provides young readers with more information regarding the  S.S. Lusitania, the German U-boat campaign, the Isles of Scilly and the S.S. Schiller in a short section titled Read On For Some Background Information on Listen to the Moon.

Book Details:

Listen To The Moon by Michael Morpurgo
London: HarperCollins Children's Books     2014
433 pp.

Avis Dolphin by Frieda Wishinsky

Avis Dolphin is based on a real person of the same name who sailed on the steamship, The Lusitania, in 1915. The real Avis Dolphin was accompanied by Hilda Ellis and Sarah Smith on her journey. While on the ill-fated liner, she was befriended by Professor Ian Holbourn, also a real person. Avis Dolphin is an imaginative retelling of their voyage across the Atlantic in diary form beginning on Day One Saturday, May 1, 1915 and continuing until the last entry on Day Seven, Friday May 7, 1915 when tragedy struck.

The story opens with twelve-year-old Avis Dolphin arriving at Pier 54 in New York City, preparing to board the Lusitania. Accompanying her are two nurses, Hilda Ellis and Sarah Smith from her mother's nursing home in St. Thomas, Ontario. Avis doesn't want to leave her home to travel to England where she will visit her grandparents in Worcester and study at a school there. She feels even worse when she overhears a conversation between two photographers attempting to photograph the famous millionaire, Mr. Vanderbilt who has arrived to board the ship. They are discussing the possibility that the Lusitania might be in danger of being attacked by the Germans who have sent a warning out that the sea around the British Isles is a war zone. However Hilda reassures her that Mr. Sumner of the Cunard Lines has indicated that the Lusitania is too fast for the German U-boats. They try to comfort her by pointing out all the wealthy travellers who are boarding the Lusitania, indicating that they believe the voyage will be a safe one.

At 12:20pm the Lusitania pulls away from the dock and sets sail for Liverpool, England. The next morning finds Avis feeling unwell and seasick. Unable to eat breakfast, she walks to the deck in the hopes the fresh air will help her. There she meets a kindly Scottish gentleman named Ian Holbourn who notices that Avis feels unwell and encourages her to join him for a walk. Hilda recognizes him as Professor Ian Holbourn, the Laird of Foula, a small rocky island in the western Scottish Shetlands. To distract Avis from her sea sickness, Professor Holbourn begins by telling her some facts about the Lusitania and also about his wife Marion and his three boys. He invites her to visit his family at Foula. They decide to explore the first class section of the ship, and are amazed at its opulence.

Professor Holbourn has told Avis that legend holds that his island of Foula was once inhabited by a giant and a bogeyman. Avis is enthralled by this and asks the Professor to tell her more about the giant and the bogeyman which he does in bits and pieces as they journey across the Atlantic. Professor Holbourn is concerned about safety on the Lusitania, and when he witnesses a poorly devised life-boat drill, he questions the sailors. This brings him into conflict with Captain Turner who feels that lifeboat drills would only upset the passengers.

Meanwhile Hilda and Sarah spend their time flirting with the eligible men in second class. Sarah has snared a boy named Peter whom she meets every day in the dining room while Hilda makes friends with Richard and Jane who are twins. As the voyage continues, Avis finds herself enjoying the sea, Professor Holbourn prepares to give his talk on his trip to Iceland, and Hilda and Sarah have a falling out. But everyone becomes anxious once the coast of Ireland is spotted and the warning from Germany is remembered. 

Discussion

Avis Dolphin is a well-written account of a terrible marine disaster that occurred during World War I and not long after the sinking of the Titanic. In fact, the collective memory of the Titanic disaster was still very fresh in the minds of most people in North America and Britain when the Lusitania sank. 

The RMS Lusitania, a British passenger ship sank on May 7, 1915 after being torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat. The Lusitania, which was launched in 1906, was a very large ship that could carry over two thousand passengers, segregated according to class, and eight hundred crew. The ship was a glamorous ocean liner that had a library, a barber shop, smoking salons and even elevators. The Lusitania was the fastest ship during its time at sea. 

The Lusitania sailed a route between Liverpool and New York City on a monthly basis during World War I. Although ships sailing in the waters around the British Isles were often attacked by the German Unterseeboote or U-boats, most people did not believe the Lusitania would be a target. They considered the ship too fast for the U-boats to be able to successfully attack. The fact that it was also mainly a civilian passenger ship was another reason to doubt a U-boat attack. However, unknown to the crew and passengers, the Lusitania frequently transported war supplies from America to Britain. 

On what would be her last voyage, the Lusitania carried 696 crew members and 1266 passengers. Most were British Empire citizens but there were also American and Russian citizens aboard. There had been warnings placed in American newspapers by the German Embassy about the risk of travelling by ship but these were either ignored or not seen by the passengers. The waters around Britain and Ireland had been declared a war zone by the German Imperial Navy who considered any ship "fair game" for attack. 

The Lusitania reached the war zone on the evening of May 6, 1915.Heavy fog on the morning of May 7th, meant that Captain William Turner had to slow the Lusitania so he could accurately determine their position. He was warned of the presence of German U-boats off the coast of Ireland but he did not know their location as radar had not yet been invented. As the Lusitania moved closer to shore, it also moved directly into the path of German U-20 which fired one torpedo that struck the ocean liner below the Captain's Bridge. The Lusitania sank in eighteen minutes. Only seven hundred sixty-three people would survive. One of those survivors was Avis Dolphin.

Avis Gertrude Dolphin was born in 1902 in Rotherham, England. When she was two-years-old, Avis, her brother Jack and her mother, recently widowed, immigrated to Canada. Avis's father had died from tuberculosis after returning from the Boer War. Avis and her mother settled in St. Thomas, Ontario where they lived at 46 William Street. Avis attended Wellington Street School.  Avis's mother sent her to England to complete her education. Avis travelled with two nurses, Sarah Smith and Hilda Ellis who worked at her mother's nursing home and who were to vacation in England. They travelled to New York City where they boarded the Lusitania.

On the Lusitania, a very seasick Avis was befriended Professor Ian Holbourn who was also the laird of the Isle of Foula. He taught at Oxford University and it was his stories that distracted Avis who was suffering from seasickness. When the torpedo hit the Lusitania, Avis was waiting in the dining room for the second sitting. Holbourn took Avis to his cabin to get lifebelts and they made their way onto the deck where they found Sarah and Hilda. After seeing a portside lifeboat crash into the side of the ship, they sought a boat on the starboard side. Avis, Sarah and Hilda were placed into a boat by Holbourn but it capsized after two men attempted to jump into it as it was being lowered. Avis made it to a raft but she never found Sarah or Hilda. Holbourn also survived and he and his wife Marion eventually brought Avis to her grandparents in Worcester.

Freda Wishinsky tells her story without fanfare, simply and in an engaging manner through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl who is struggling to make sense of the world around her. In 1915, it is a world embroiled in a war that was supposed to end quickly. In Wishinsky's fictional account, Avis enjoys herself most of the time on the Lusitania but is old enough to be concerned about the possibility of an attack by a German U-boat. She enjoys the companionship of the professor, manages to explore all three classes of the Lusitania and meet some of the passengers, and tries to understand the complicated relationship between Sarah and Hilda. Avis also notices the worry of the passengers as they approach the coast of Ireland. 

Professor Johan "Ian" Holbourn was the Laird of Foula, which he purchased after visiting there in 1900. Both Ian and his wife Marion had dreams that the Lusitania would be torpedoed. Holbourn was determined that the passengers on the boat know how to use their lifebelts and to go to the lifeboats. Captain Turner did request that Holbourn stop talking about lifeboat drills and safety, as it might upset the passengers. Holbourn also befriended Avis and helped her on the voyage as well as helped her to survive the sinking of the Lusitania.

Her narrative during the sinking manages to convey the confusion and terror around her, which she also experiences. "We climb over broken tables, chairs, lights, dishes, ripped jackets, skirts, underwear and tablecloths. We stumble over a pair of boots and a headless doll.
The injured are everywhere -- sobbing, moaning -- but we can't help them. We can't stop. I shudder as we step over a woman. I know her! She's Harold's wife, Mildred. Harold, who I met on the deck just two days ago. Harold, who can't swim. And here's his wife. Is she unconscious -- or dead? We can't even stop to help her." All of this makes her narrative both realistic and believable.

Wishinsky portrays Avis's determination to survive. When she is thrown into the sea after their lifeboat capsizes, Avis repeatedly tells herself to fight. "I kick. Kick, Hard. Harder. Fight. Yes! I'm up! Up!...My clothes and shoes drag me down. My head falls back. No! I can't let it. Stay up! Up!"  Once in a boat, Avis hears the cries of those begging to be saved but their boat holds only two people, herself and the man who rescued her. "People drift past our boat, screaming, begging James to take them in." In Wishinsky's telling Avis is rescued by a small boat and rowed ashore where she is taken into a small fishing hut. In real life, Avis was rescued by a small boat that also picked up several other women survivors and they were taken aboard a small steamer where they were warmed, and given hot brandy and milk.

The novel also captures the immediate trauma the sinking has on Avis, who cannot stop thinking about the fate of those whom she met on the Lusitania. "I smile remembering how we were almost kicked out of first class by the angry waiter. Where is that waiter now? Where are all those waiters and cooks?...And the first class elevator man? And the German stowaways, especially the young one who looked at me with such sad eyes?...And what about the crewman near the lifeboats? And the couples who hid in the lifeboats kissing and hugging? And Ailsa who won the spelling contest and was so proud? And the people playing shuffleboard? And Norman from third class who was going to work on his grandparents' farm? And his family?"

Wishinsky uses the artwork of Willow Dawson to tell Professor Holbourn's story of a girl shipwrecked on Foula, encountering a giant and a bogeyman on the island.  Dawson's unique black and white illustrations, done as graphic novel panels appear throughout the novel telling Holbourn's story. It's a unique way to present a story within a story.  The story serves to distract Avis and she tells Holbourn, "Your stories take me to enchanted places and to times long ago."

Avis Dolphin is a fascinating, well-told story of an important historical event that should appeal to younger readers. The book is in a larger format with large type that lends itself to easy reading. Frieda Wishinsky provides an informative Author's Note at the back which details some facts about World War I, Avis Dolphin and Professor Ian Holbourn and about Foula.

Image credit: https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2015/05/0507-oarchives.JPG?alias=standard_900x600nc  

Book Details:

Avis Dolphin by Frieda Wishinsky, illustrated by Willow Dawson
Toronto: Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press 2015
164 pp.