LORD OF THE NUTCRACKER MEN

War—idealistic, brutal, awe inspiring, numbing, jingoistic and ultimately heartbreaking—is the central theme of this thoughtful and thought-provoking novel. The Great War has begun, and Johnny watches his kindly toymaker father turn against the German shopkeepers and neighbors in the family's London community. Soon after his father joins the army and travels to France to fight, Johnny is sent to live with his curmudgeonly Auntie Ivy in a small town on the south coast of England. Most chapters begin with a letter from Johnny's father, and from these the boy (and readers) derive an increasingly complex—and horrifying—vision of life in the trenches. Accompanying each letter, and providing vivid illustration of the events described in the missive, is a wooden soldier carved by Johnny's father, which the boy adds to the ranks of his toy army. As the weeks go by, Johnny entertains himself by staging vast battles with this army, until—in a series of scenes that unflinchingly convey a child's conflicting feelings of omnipotence and vulnerability—he grows to fear that his play is somehow magically affecting his father's life at the front and, indeed, the entire war. His father's account of the Christmas Truce of 1914 and Johnny's own role in reuniting a grieving family with a shell-shocked soldier are among the events that bring the novel to its solemn, yet quietly hopeful, close. Both its timing and its message are eerily resonant. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)