Captain Rosalie by Timothee de Frombelle illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault

Little Rosalie, aged five and a half, is sent to school very early each morning and picked up long after all the children have gone home because her mother is working long hours in a factory.

"The others think I'm drawing in my notebook when I'm sitting on the little bench underneath the coat pegs at the back of the class. ... But I am a soldier on a mission. I am spying on the enemy. I am preparing my plan."

Each evening, when letters arrive from her father who is fighting in the trenches, her mother takes her home and reads his warm messages about catching trout and learning to swim. Rosalie cannot listen. "I can see my mother is still reading, for a long time although there is just a single page of writing in the envelope."

I can't tell you what Rosalie is planning to do but the final scenes will leave you gasping.

This does look like a slim book, it has 64 pages, and so you might think it is written for a younger child but be warned there is no happy ending. I would suggest this book for Grade Four and up.

In 2010 I read two books by Timothee de Fombelle and I became an instant fan of his writing made all the more special by the fact that these books, as with the one I am discussing today, were written in French and so I am relying on the expertise of a skilled translator. Captain Rosalie was translated by Sam Gordon.

Captain Rosalie is a MUST HAVE for every Primary School library. For me it is absolutely a ten out of ten book!

I now need to find this book which is where Captain Rosalie first appeared in 2015. How wonderful that Walker Books decided it was important enough to need a an exquisitely illustrated volume of its own.

I would follow this book with a French movie from 2002 called To be and to Have (Etre et Avior). Read more about Timothee here.  The illustrator web site for Isabelle Arsenault is worth a visit too. Her work is just perfect for this book.

This is one of the most powerful and affecting books about the impact that war has on children that we've read in this, the centenary year of the end of World War 1. ReaditDaddy

While Father is at war, Rosalie begins a secret mission.