The Orphans of Normandy
Nancy Amis
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0689841434

A true story of World War II told through children's drawings.

For every girl who ever wanted an adventure about how to be brave, this is a real one, it really did happen.

When the Allies land in Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, one hundred orphan girls are forced to flee the only home they have ever known, their orphanage near the town of Caen. They begin a trek on foot to a safer place some 150 miles south.

The War has been raging for five long years & now it has come to their doorstep. The girls, ranging from 3 to 19 years old, & led by their teachers, bravely march away from La Maison du Clos in St. Andre-sur-Orne, keeping one step ahead of the fighting. Each child wears only her red, white & blue tattersall dress & carries a blanket, a little white flag & some bread.

The Orphans of Normandy is told through these girls' memories in pencil crayon pictures drawn so long ago, like the samplers girls used to stitch centuries ago. The drawings show their classrooms, their sunny sewing room, swimming in the river, the neat kitchen garden, the chicken house & rabbit hutch, the orchard & milking cows, the dormitories with their high windows out of which the girls stared at the night time air raids.

Then come the memories of the German soldiers as they lay waste to the girls' home & its bounty; the bombings, & having to watch as soldiers loot their home & possessions. When the Germans order the girls out of the water mill cave & send them off to the horizon, they set forth through the Cinglass Forest, waving their little flags whenever fighter planes swooped low to do battle.

& so their epic journey begins, resting in orchards under the watchful eyes of German soldiers while overhead American fighter planes scour the road ahead for danger. On, on to Falaise, an old brick town in so much ruin the girls have to walk in “Indian-file” Welcomed in villages, sleeping in haylofts, watching paratroopers descend from the sky, & eventually by the middle of August, riding in donkey-drawn carts they arrive at Beaufort-en-Vallée, where they meet Americans & their tanks.

The girls can't stay long in this refuge & spend the next two years moving from place to place until in 1946, they are offered Le Clos de Vaureal on the Oise River. They came to that lovely old chateau wearing bed slippers & their dresses. They had no money, no furniture, no fabric, only the will & the skills to start anew.

That year Agnes Amis, an American teacher who taught French, who had lived & studied in France between the Wars, (& everyone in France remembers both World Wars because two whole generations of men are missing) received a package from an old friend. In it was a little dress, photographs of the girls & an illustrated journal of their journey. Agnes Amis promptly did what any compassionate American did in those days, she began collecting for & sending off to France, care packages filled with the things the girls needed & wanted in their new orphanage.

Years later, Nancy Amis' Great-Aunt Aggie would read from that journal as her great-niece stared at the photos. In 2000 Nancy, by now an artist & a mother, biked from Caen to Beaufort-en-Vallée. She followed the route guided by the girls' hand drawn maps, uncovering & answering many of the questions she had had about this heroic journey about which she had heard all her childhood.

The Orphans of Normandy is a jewel, requiring no criticism or comment other than to say, if how girls draw the world is of any interest to you, you will be enchanted & awed by the story they tell. Each page has what the girls wrote (in French, naturally) within their pictures & opposite is a clear English translation.

Truly inspiring! If you think girls don't have adventures, open The Orphans of Normandy & follow their lead.

Do catch my Interview with Nancy Amis.
(11/09/03)

Rebecca