A Song for Will

Hilary Robinson and Martin Impey have created something genuinely moving in this epistolary picture book — letters between a young errand boy and the real gardeners of Heligan who marched off to World War I carry an emotional weight that most children's war stories only approximate. The BBC Radio 4 feature and Young Quills Award shortlisting confirm what reviewers say: this is beautifully crafted, sensitively told, and exactly the kind of book a classroom conversation about WWI needs. Parents of younger children should be ready to talk about loss.