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Saplings

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Saplings

By: Noel Streatfeild
Narrated by: Janet Streatfeild
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Laurel, at eleven, was conscious of being happy. She was almost afraid of it. 'I'll never be as happy again. When I'm quite old, as old as 30, I'll come back to this bit of Eastbourne. I'll come on the same day in June and remember me now. ' The four Wiltshire children live a comfortable middle-class English life. But as WWII overtakes the country, the family, like so many others, slowly disintegrates.

Told from the perspective of the children, Saplings is 'immensely readable . . . a dark inversion of the author's best-known book, the children's classic Ballet Shoes' (Sunday Telegraph).

©1945 The Estate of Noel Streatfeild (P)2025 Soundings 20th Century Family Life Genre Fiction Historical Fiction War & Military
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very very sad, tells of effect of father's death on the mother and children, all negative. I wish I hadn't read it

very very sad

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Good story - despite the strange non-ending. It is surprising that generation were not even more emotionally retarded!

How times have changed

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