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Summary
Summary
Timothée de Fombelle and Isabelle Arsenault capture the heart-wrenching cost of war for one small girl in a delicately drawn, expertly told tale.
While her father is at war, five-year-old Rosalie is a captain on her own secret mission. She wears the disguise of a little girl and tracks her progress in a secret notebook. Some evenings, Rosalie's mother reads aloud Father's letters from the front lines, so that Rosalie knows he is thinking of her and looking forward to the end of the war and to finally coming home. But one day a letter comes that her mother doesn't read to her, and Rosalie knows her mission must soon come to an end. Author Timothée de Fombelle reveals the true consequence of war through the experiences of small, determined Rosalie, while acclaimed artist Isabelle Arsenault illustrates Rosalie's story in muted grays marked with soft spots of color -- the orange flame of Rosalie's hair, the pale pink of a scarf, the deep blue ink of her father's letters. All the more captivating for the simplicity with which it is drawn and told, this quiet tale will stay with the reader long after its last page is turned.
Author Notes
Timothée de Fombelle is a French playwright and the author of many books, including Toby Alone, Toby and the Secrets of the Tree, Vango, A Prince Without a Kingdom, and The Book of Pearl. He lives with his family in Paris.
Isabelle Arsenault is the author-illustrator of Alpha and the illustrator of several other picture books, including the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt and Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Novesky. Isabelle Arsenault lives in Quebec.
Sam Gordon is a freelance translator based in London.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Since her father is off fighting for France in WWI and her mother works in a factory, the local schoolteacher looks after Rosalie, who sits quietly at the back of the classroom, drawing and listening. In her racing imagination, the five-year-old (who has never known peacetime) is Captain Rosalie, a soldier "on a mission.... preparing a plan." Though consumed by wartime thoughts--in one poignant scene, she leans out her window at night, listening for "the noise of the war"--Rosalie feigns no interest in her father's letters from the front, which her mother reads aloud, omitting harrowing details. Yet Rosalie steadfastly prepares for her nebulous military obligations, "so I'm ready for when my day comes." That time suddenly arrives in the form of a nighttime visit from a gendarme delivering the news that she and her mother have silently dreaded. De Fombelle (Vango) sublimely crafts a taut story with expansive spaces between words, inviting readers' creative interpretation. In similarly open-ended and emotion-charged art by Arsenault (Colette's Lost Pet), Rosalie's luminous, carrot-hued hair and determined expressions interject a promise of hope amid the darkness. A heartrending portrayal of resilience in sorrowful times. Ages 8--12. (June)
Horn Book Review
Young Rosalie narrates this poignant story (which originally appeared in the 2015 short story collection The Great War) of war, loss, and resilienceand a childs need to know the truth, even if painful. I am Captain Rosalie. Im disguised as a little girl, five and a half years oldTo go unnoticed, I dont wear a helmet or a uniform. With her father away fighting in WWI and her mother at work in a factory, she sits at the back of the classroom in her French-village school while the older children do their lessons. Unbeknownst to all, Rosalie is on a mission (only gradually revealed): to become literate in order to read her fathers letters. Her mother reads them aloud, but their contents are all banalities about going fishing when he returns and being good in the meantime, and Rosalie doesnt buy it. When, one morning, she makes the breakthrough to literacy, she reads the letters and learns the truth: they are full of anguish, attesting to the horrors and misery of war. Then Rosalie finds the blue envelope (the last letter received, which her mother did not read to her) containing the news that her father has been killed in action. Though devastating, this is also cathartic: I wanted to know, I sayAnd now I do. She steps forward and takes me in her arms, and I cry with her. The books small, square format creates intimacy, reinforced by the open page design and frequent watercolor-wash illustrations. De Fombelles (Vango, rev. 9/14) text is spare, allowing Rosalies fierceness to shine through. Spots of color in Arsenaults (Louis Undercover, rev. 11/17) emotive art focus viewer attention on significant details: Rosalies glowing red hair, the fateful blue envelope. martha v. parravano September/October 2019 p.83(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Since little Rosalie's father is at the front and her mother must work at the factory, she spends her days at the local school. She's too young for the lessons, but the kind teacher lets her sit in the back and draw. Rosalie's not just any little girl, though; she imagines she's a soldier on a mission, infiltrating enemy ranks and gathering powerful information. De Fombelle quietly but movingly evokes the complicated emotions of both Rosalie, who's proud of and scared for her father, and her mother, who's struggling to keep it together. Rosalie, who can't read yet, can nonetheless tell that the rosy letters from her father, which her mother reads aloud every night, are not as long as her mother makes them sound. When the lessons from her classroom observations finally pay off and she can read the letters on her own, the truth is hard to bear. Arsenault's soft, shadowy illustrations, both spot and full-bleed pages, cultivate a rich sense of place and contribute to the thoughtful emotional tenor of this WWI story.--Sarah Hunter Copyright 2019 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A young child undertakes a "secret mission" while her father is away at war.First published from a French original in the 2015 collection The Great War: Stories Inspired by Items from the First World War but presented here in a small, neatly formatted volume with new illustrations, the tale features 5-year-old Rosalie, who spends her days at the back of the one-room school while her mother is off at work. The older children and the teacher, a veteran who's lost an arm, think she's just dreaming and drawing pictures, but she's actually engaged in a mission: "One day I'll be awarded a medal for this. It's already gleaming deep within me." The nature of that mission comes clear one day when she sneaks home and discovers that she can finally read for herself the letters her father had been sending from the frontbut instead of the optimistic, loving missives her mother had been "reading" to her, she discovers them to be dark cries of anguish and despair. That very day a final letter arrivesfrom the Ministry of War, with a medal enclosed. Rather than end with that crushingly ironic twist, though, de Fombelle leaves Rosalie smiling, through her tears, at a friend and regarding the medal not as a dead thing but something alive. The bright red hair of Rosalie and her mother seems to glow in the gray, wintry light of Arsenault's village scenes, likewise offering hints of life and warmth even in the face of terrible loss. Everyone in view is white.A spare tale likely to engender deep, complex responses. (Historical fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.