The Blitz Sisters – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Family, WW2, tragedy, hope, love.
Children’s book title: The Blitz Sisters.
Children’s author: Judith Eagle.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Faber.
ISBN: 9780571388707.
Recommended for children aged: 9-12.
First published: Paperback February 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: learning about WW2 through the experiences of a fictional family, their relations and friends.
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Our review:
Lydia, Peggy and Teddy Linden are sisters who, at the start of the war, were living in London. By the time peace was finally achieved, they had lived in five different places, experienced both the horrors of war and the delights of being part of a close and loving family. They’d suffered unimaginable loss and delirious reunions, while seeing how London and its suburbs suffered destruction on an epic level, while certain parts of the countryside remained almost completely unscathed and unchanged.
Written in three parts, the book starts with Lydia’s experiences in 1939, detailing the destruction of the Blitz, the evacuation of the capital’s children and the loneliness and bullying she finds in the small countryside town where the girls are sent to live with their aunt.
Peggy and her sisters return to London when there is a prolonged respite from the bombing. Today, Peggy would be diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, but in 1943 this didn’t happen, and she hated school, skipped lessons and hid away to draw her local surroundings. When she meets Arno, a young German refugee living with a local woman from the Quakers, who also loves art and skips school because of the bullying he is subjected to, her life changes for the better, but still finds her everyday life a challenge.
Teddy’s story begins in 1946, after the war is over, but when life is still anything but normal. Intelligent and eager to learn, Teddy loves to read and spend time with her family, now they are finally all together without the threat of separation hanging over them. She is able to enjoy her schooling in ways denied to her sisters, including scholarships, trips and an everyday freedom they were unable to experience.
An excellently paced middle-grade novel, The Blitz Sisters doesn’t pull any punches. There are no sugar-coated facts and, although the author doesn’t include bloody or gory details, the storyline hides nothing. It includes the experiences which changed everything for everybody, including, in each section, things which aren’t commonly included in fiction of this type or age range.
Our verdict:
The Linden sisters and their mum, Cassie, are the main protagonists in this wartime novel, the first part of which starts in 1939 and is told from Lydia’s point of view.
Reeling after the death of their father just before the start of the war, they have to deal with the resulting move to a smaller home because money is so tight and their subsequent evacuation away from their mother to live with their dad’s sister, Aunt Phoebe. From the cosy home in the country, Lydia experiences isolation, loneliness and bullying, until she can’t stand it any longer and decides to make a life-changing return to London. The events which follow this, and her eventual return to the countryside, will affect things for Lydia and her family for the remainder of the war and the years that follow.
When the girls finally return to London, the focus switches to Peggy who, although not recognised at the time, is obviously dyslexic. Her experiences are shared with Arno, a young German boy who was sent to London by his mother before the war and who she sees as her kindred spirit. Together, they bunk off school, share their artistic dreams and even set up a den in a bombed-out terraced house before they are separated by circumstance and the Lindens’ second evacuation, this time to the Lake District.
By the time it’s Teddy’s turn to tell her story, the war has ended. Intelligent and empathetic, she loves school as much as Peggy hates it, reads everything she can find and wants everyone’s life to be just as they plan it. Given chances her sisters didn’t have, she is able to travel on school trips arranged by her senior school, spend time at the library every day and cross the capital on public transport whenever she wants. What she can’t do is solve everyone’s problems, but she is determined to try, even when it means putting herself in danger.
At over 450 pages, this is a long book for this age range. Its three separate sections do make it feel far more accessible, however, and although probably not suitable for reluctant readers, it does feel attainable for most reasonably confident readers. There are deaths of relatively minor but recurring characters included, but the resulting grief is well-written and sympathetically described.
Overall, The Blitz Sisters is an excellent resource to use to look at a pivotal part of our history through the eyes of children of a similar age to those this book is recommended for.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- Lydia, Peggy and Teddy had no say in their evacuation to the countryside. Apart from being away from their mum, what do you think the biggest challenges would be?
- When Lydia returned to London, how scared and shocked do you think she would be?
- Peggy is most probably dyslexic and maybe has ADHD – how much harder would everything be for her because her teachers and peers wouldn’t understand the problems she had in school?
- Teddy was able to have much more freedom than her sisters but still found things tough. Which of the things she could do every day do you think was the best?
- Rationing was worse after the war ended – what replacements did you think sounded the most disgusting?
- How much easier would living in the countryside and having more space be if you could grow fruit and vegetables for you and your friends and family?
- Did you have a favourite part of the story? How difficult do you think it would be for the author to make the sisters similar but still individual?
- There are lots of fictional stories about the Second World War – was there anything you learned here that you didn’t know about before?
Many thanks to Faber for the review copy.
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