Armistice Runner by Tom Palmer
This week’s book recommendation links to Remembrance Sunday, and is suitable for children in Year 4 up…
Lily is a fell runner and is training for the first big race of the season in the Lake District village where her grandparents live. She discovers from her grandmother (who has Alzheimer’s disease) that her great-great grandfather was a trench runner during the last few days of World War I. Given a box of his things, Lily becomes enthralled with his trench running logs which contain far more information than times and distances – it’s a diary of his time in France.
Full of family, endurance, determination and heart, this is a well researched reminder of the lives of the men in the trenches that we remember this Sunday, and how we can honour their memory through our actions today. Kindness and empathy echo throughout the story that you are sure to be as determined to finish as Lily was to read Ernest’s diary entries.