Mission Telemark

Four teenagers are sent on a mission – the real life sabotage that prevented Hitler from producing an atomic bomb. By taking the real event and making a children’s mission, Amanda Mitchison has revived the war story. The liberal middle-aged reader in me has a few doubts – particularly about the turning of war into adventure yarn, and particularly about the fictional teeny telling of the tale. However, that same reader recalls the ten-year-old Victor reader he once was. I would have loved this book as a kid, and those with the perennial interest in that era will lap it up. It’s a brave step. It may prove controversial. It works. For a generation of children for whom the Second World War has become history lessons about evacuees and rationing, a revitalisation of the heroic sagas surrounding the era may be overdue. Mitchison brings home the training, the hardships and the fear of such an event. One added bonus is the scrapbook-like entries that unfold to provide facsimiles of the agents’ notes and documents, an added touch that draws the reader into the adventure. Readers of around ten will enjoy this.