The Silver Sword

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frequent) or “bugger”, (less frequent), quite unimpressed by the fact that is the way that many 15 plus-ers speak…” The title was, with regret, rejected. Ruth was able to talk to her father on the telephone and he told her that he would come over on the ferry to collect them and take them back to Switzerland.

Intent on reaching the River Danube, the children paddled along the River Falkenberg and overcame a series of hazards, including an encounter with a soldier who fired some shots at Ruth and Bronia. His own words about the Balicki children sum up his existence: “Warsaw is full of lost children…they’re dirty and starving and they all look alike” (34). An aspect of the book of particular interest to the contemporary reader is Serraillier’s portrayal of attitudes towards refugees, which is brought into focus as the children make their way from Poland to Switzerland: “Some villages refused to admit them, having neither food nor shelter for any more refugees.

Read all On a cold, dark night in Warsaw in 1942, the Balicki children watch in horror as Nazi stormtroopers arrest their mother. Despite being aware of the need to reassure teachers whilst engaging teenage readers, sometimes they had to defend their choices. Unfortunately the camp superintendent says they cannot cross into Switzerland because the Swiss authorities will not allow any more refugees in unless they have family to take care of them. The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature deems the work “one of the most remarkable books since 1945,” and in 2012 it was featured in Once Upon a Wartime, an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

What he does clearly indicate, though, is that Joseph, like his children, is a rarity: escape was not common, and success was even rarer. Ian Serraillier, at the time of his appointment as New Windmill editor, was an English teacher at Midhurst Grammar School in Sussex, a poet and author of several novels for children.

Despite Serraillier’s aversion to any kind of glorification of violence, there had been some early objections to the book from some quarters, and it was questioned whether children should be exposed to such difficult subject-matter. He argued that his themes of humanity overcoming suffering were timeless and transcended politics or race. All of the roof ridges in the area are connected, which is lucky: they would not have gotten away otherwise. As Evelyn Arizpe observes, “a decontextualised focus on the journey or on the arrival often means the historical and political circumstances that led to displacement in the first place are ignored” ( 2021, p. In 1944, Warsaw was liberated by the Russians, but there was still no news of Edek's whereabouts or of the children's parents.

Significantly none came from children, by whom this story is remembered with gratitude because it treated them as responsible citizens who could be trusted with a frank account of what the war and its by-products, like juvenile delinquency and refugees, was really about. Just like Ruth mused when Jan made a comment about Edek dying and finding their parents becoming impossible due to the sword’s absence, it is possible for readers to wonder one last time if the silver sword was perhaps imbued with some sort of magic or luck.

They find that he has now been sent to a camp for children with tuberculosis; however, when they reach it they learn he ran away. He finds two canoes that belonged to his son and puts them together so that the children can use them to make their getaway. Ruth’s formation of her own school later on in the novel nods to Joseph’s understanding that education truly is power.

He is flabbergasted to see that the boy has picked his pockets again, and is contentedly eating his food. By sticking together as a family (and taking on an adopted brother, the incorrigible Jan) and focusing on the day when they would reach Switzerland and be reunited with their parents, the children undertake a seemingly impossible journey through three countries. Their enthusiasm is not dampened, though, and they eagerly wait on the lakeside for the Swiss boat, even though it is not due to arrive for hours. Both Joseph and Margrit are alive, but it is clear Margrit suffered terribly and has aged at a precipitous rate.

Although the wartime setting of The Silver Sword certainly magnifies these confusions, the Serrailliers believed more generally that children on the cusp of adulthood required a particular sort of book. In 2011, a year before the centenary of the author's birth, a radio adaptation was produced for BBC Radio 4 Extra. They ask Jan if he would like to live with them permanently; although he would, he declines because he feels like one of the Balicki kids. The trajectory of the list was such that, having started by predominantly publishing books written for children, albeit at the older end of the spectrum, by the middle of the 1960s, a significant proportion of the list was made up of books originally published as adult novels. He introduced himself as Jan, and in his possession he had a wooden box, the contents of which he kept secret.