"The War That Saved My Life" by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

This multiple award-winning book has a truly lousy cover (old-school, childish) but fortunately, I am not one to judge a book by it's cover.  Hopefully, student readers will be so blinded by the many award stickers that they will overlook the 1952 style imagery.  It was interesting -- a number of colleagues were not wowed by the book.  Others said they disliked the ending.  As to the first, I disagree, as to the second -- well, we will get to that.  Set in 1939, England, this is the story of Ada and her brother Jamie, who go to the countryside to avoid the possible bombing of London as World War II begins.  The war referred to in the title, however, is not the one you think it is.  Ada is a child abused -- horribly.  It is not until her life takes this drastic change that she begins to understand what was denied to her.  It is this subtle underpinning to the novel which made it so powerful to me.  Perhaps those who grew up in happy households don't get it.  They don't understand what it is like to be a child in a miserable situation and not realize that they are in a miserable situation.  They don't know what it is like to be out in a beautiful world when you have seen ugliness, how it can be incredibly hard to trust the good, because it is hard to trust anything or anyone.  Ada's journey was, to me, very realistic and sharply painful, but there is hope in this tale -- a lot of it.  Much like "Becoming Mary Mehan" this is a story arc where a girl finds life again, and, after a long slow road, learns to embrace it.  The book is also like "The Night Gardener", sans the horror aspect, as Ada and Jamie enter a broken household and help to make it whole.  The gentle, quiet way that their caretaker's past is revealed is both appropriate and touching.  My criticisms are few -- there was a reference to Queen Elizabeth at a point where Elizabeth II was still a princess, and there is a reference to "occupied France" before France is actually occupied.  Minor.  As to the ending ... well???  It was rushed, convenient, pat, and left a lot, and I do mean a lot, of unanswered questions.  It's as if Ms. Bradley got to the last three or four chapters and said "I have to end this" so she just tried to wrap the whole thing up in a neat bow.  After too many Dystopia novels, a less than awful ending was kind of nice, but it didn't ring true to the rest of the story.  And, while I am really, really sick of reading one series after another, a follow-up to this tale might not be a bad idea.  Bottom line?  This was a book I stayed up after my bedtime to finish reading, and I haven't done that in a very, very long time.