Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Henry has always felt like an outsider and things are about to get worse when his family moves to the countryside and the prospect of a new school looms. He retreats more and more into his shell, until he meets Dottie, a frail old lady, who has tremendous spirit. He feels as though he knows her, as though they have been friends for many years. And as she tells him about her wartime romance with a Royal Air Force navigator also named Henry, our Henry is drawn into that world. In a series of mysterious, sometimes frightening events he re-enacts Henry's life . . . and learns that despite being dreadfully afraid, Henry acted heroically at the cost of his own life. Only our Henry knows the true story and it shows him a way through his own self-doubts and misgivings.From the Hardcover edition.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
An air of mystery wafts through Newbery's (Sisterland) quietly suspenseful novel. Henry isn't sure how he will fit in now that his family has moved from London to a small village in rural Suffolk. On his first night in the family's new house, Henry sees a shadowy young man surrounded by glowing fireflies, waiting by the gate at the bottom of the garden. The next day, Henry meets Dottie, his neighbor's elderly aunt, and senses an odd connection with her that is also somehow linked to the stranger in the garden. Henry's dreams and visions allow him to share in the experiences of Dottie's long-ago beau (also named Henry), who died during WWII. Like a homespun cousin to the Ouija board, the Scrabble game conveys otherworldly, thematically-related messages through its tiles. More cozy than frightening, these supernatural goings-on provide a counterpoint to the day-to-day events of Henry's new life: an amusing scheme to smuggle him into the village school for the last days of term, his prickly relationship with the grumpy girl next door, and a thrilling victory for Henry and his new friends in the village's annual fete. An abundance of small satisfactions await readers attuned to this novel's gentle cadences. Ages 10-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.VOYA -
This book, originally published in 2004 in the U.K., is missing something. It is the story of Henry, who has just moved with his parents from London to a small country village where they live in a cottage near the church. It is his parents' dream home, but Henry only sees what it is not. It is not home. His friend Nabil is not in his flat downstairs. Grace, the girl down the row, is not nice. And that strange man smoking at the gate, surrounded by fireflies, cannot be seen by anyone but Henry. The quandary of this book is that it tries to do too much. It is a story of a boy uprooted from familiarity, finding his place in a new village. It is a story of a boy becoming friends with an old woman and dealing with her coming death, the tale of a mysterious ghost, and the saga of a boy falling in and out of the life of that ghost, who was a navigator in the Royal Air Force during World War II. It also is a story of dealing with friends, making new friends, and getting along with people whom parents think should be friends. So many themes and plot lines get wrapped up yet leave the reader wishing that the author had focused on one: the story of moving and friendship or the story of the ghost. Or maybe that she had had more space, so she could have fleshed both story lines out a bit more.Children's Literature -
Henry's family moves from London to a small Suffolk village at the end of Henry's last year of primary school. The first night in his new home Henry sees a young man surrounded by fireflies outside his back garden gate, but when he tells his parents, the man is gone. The next day he meets his new neighbors, their daughter Grace, and Aunt Dottie. Henry is drawn to Dottie immediately, as Dottie is to him. She tells him all about Henry the Navigator, the World War II airman she would have married, if he had come back from his thirteenth mission. Henry realizes that this Henry is the man at the gate, the man he had dreamed of being. As Henry learns more about Henry the Navigator through dreams and other mysterious connections, he also spends more time with Grace and learns that she wants to join the Royal Air Force. In this beautiful tale of connections through generations and even through death, Newbery tells a haunting story of the power of love.School Library Journal
Gr 5–7
First published in England, this quiet, gentle story of friendship and love spans years and defies time. Small, timid Henry moves with his parents at the end of Year Six to a village in Suffolk near Risingheath, a former World War II airfield. The first friend he makes is an unlikely one: his neighbor's great-aunt. He is drawn to Dottie, for whom Henry is a reminder of another Henry-her fiancé, a Royal Air Force navigator who never returned from his 13th bombing mission. The author employs a nice touch of magical realism with the shadowy figure that appears in the evening and seems to be waiting, amid the fireflies, at the gate in Henry's garden. At night the boy hears the old planes that flew over more than 60 years earlier. He is drawn into Dottie's reminiscences, and sometimes has the strange sense of being in someone else's body. While playing with a flight-simulator program on a computer, young Henry "sees" what happened on that final mission. He realizes that, although the RAF navigator was afraid, he acted heroically. This realization helps the boy find courage and a way through his own fears. He has made some friends and is looking forward to the summer holidays. This is a well-written book, with an old-fashioned tone, that emphasizes character and feelings over plot. It's for thoughtful readers who appreciate a book that lingers in their minds.
—Connie Tyrrell BurnsCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.