Results of search for [Marcia Williams]

Marcia Williams
Archie's War
Walker (40 pages) 9781406304275
Occasionally a book of this quality comes along that deserves every superlative I can summon up and write about it. The picture-strip style of Marcia Williams has served Dickens, Shakespeare and The Canterbury Tales, among other good retellings. Here she has created the diary of a boy, Archie, living during the years of the 1914 - 18 war. It is full of little, telling details: letters home from the front are included to fold out and read, with messages about what might get past the censor. The boy himself puts in doodles and dire warnings about the secrecy of some bits - as young diarists are prone to do - and reveals his own daily life, school and leisure as well as the effects of the war on families and domestic welfare. Major events from the newspapers are recorded, such as the loss of the Lusitania and, eventually, Victory Day. All is in the subdued colouring of authentic period print and of aged hand-crayoning. This is a beauty: an extraordinarily fine book indeed.