Saturday, September 19, 2020

The Bird in The Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor


Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Publication date:  August 20th 2020
Pages: 400

Elspeth Kent is a teacher at the Chefoo School in China. This is a British Missionary school, where children are placed whose parents are traveling or working abroad. Many children, like Nancy Plummer, haven't seen their mum or dad in years or know where they are at many times.

Everything changes for the school and it's people when Japan invades China and also declares war on Great Britain and The United States. The school has to move to another building, and when it does, the building is not like the one they have left. It is an old rundown, fallen apart building with an unlocked front door (so Japanese soldiers can walk in anytime) and there are no beds of furniture to accomodate the children. A scary, uncertain time starts, where the children under the guidance of Elspeth, Minnie and the other children are trying to make the best of it. Even when they are moved to another location; a Japanese prison camp in Weixian. Here their perseverance is tested to the maximum, as food and medication are getting more scarse during their time their, and Elspeth is threatened by a Japanese soldier. When and will they be liberated, and will they still be alive by then??

The Bird in The Bamboo Cage is an amazing good and very beautiful written book. Although the topic and everything that happens in it is quite sad. It is even more sad when you know this horrible things happened in real life. The teachers try to keep the spirit up for the girls with everything they know about Girl Guides, , their new experiences and challenges as a way of earning their badges and dealing with difficult tasks, even when the circumstances in the Weishien camp are very primitive, and i although t is hard to keep the hope up sometimes that they will be liberated one day, they try to keep their heads up.

I was very impressed by this book and I truly recommend reading it!







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