Norah was a ten-year-old girl living in Rigden, England during World War 2. Some of the village’s children had to help to watch out for the Nazi enemy. Not until a Nazi airplane crashed in the nearby that parents began to worry about their children’s safety. Thus, come of them began to send their kids to Canada, where people were offering homes for British children. That’s what happened to Norah and her 5-year-old brother, Gavin. Gavin didn’t even know what was happening until they got on the ship to Montreal.

In Montreal, the kids were hosted at a hotel until someone would take care of them. It was not until one week after school re-opened that a family took Norah and Gavin. They went with Mrs. Ogilvie who lived with her daughter in Toronto. Norah was still shocked by her parents’ decision to send her away. So she was grumpy, mean and impolite. That’s why she was Mrs. Ogilvie’s least favorite child of the 2. Norah hated very much being with her.

Norah was unpopular at school. So, one day, she decided to play truant from school. She went to the library where she met Bernard, a boy from her school. He was playing truant too from time to time because he was always being bugged on. From that day they became good friends.

One winter day, still furious and unhappy, she decided to run away back to England with her brother. After a long time of walking, she gave in and went back to the Ogilvies. Since then, she and Mrs. Ogilvie were friends.

For Christmas vacation, Mrs. Ogilvie’s relatives came to visit them. They had 4 nieces and they became friends with Norah. For Christmas, she got a new bicycle and lots of other presents. She was delighted.

Norah is a ten-year-old English girl. She is very brave but stubborn. She is little for her age but strong. When she goes to school in Canada, she is the most unpopular girl in the class. Gavin is Norah’s brother. He is 5 years younger then his sister. He still plays with toy animals. It is rumored that Norah should have been a boy and Gavin a girl.

Mrs. Ogilvie is an old lady who lost her son in world war one and she also lost her husband because he died of some disease. Mrs. Ogilvie is very strict and head of the clan. She owns a small cottage on an island in the middle of a lake.

Bernard is one grade higher then Norah. He wears glasses and he’s skinny. He being picked on at school because he is German. But his classmates don’t understand that he hates Hitler as much as they do. Sometimes, he gets prank calls from strangers saying to leave the country. From time to time, his mother lets him play truant from school. Then, he would go to the library.

The main conflict is that Norah has a hard time forgetting her grief and worries out of the way. She also has a hard time settling in the new country and household. The hardest of all is to get along with Mrs. Ogilvie. The solution to her first problem is to have some time of her own and be nice so she could make friends. She did that, and she even had a boy friend! But because they were friends, she made enemies, mostly the boys her age at school. Furthermore, she made friends with Mrs. Ogilvie’s nieces, which meant four new friends! She also had two annoying friends from England.

But with Mrs. Ogilvie, she acted rude. She should have reasoned with her but at the beginning she didn’t. She actually tried to run away back to England with her brother. But she gave up on it and went back home. That worked too because it made Mrs. Ogilvie realize that she wasn’t paying much attention to her. So they both agreed that they would start all over again as if nothing had happened. From then on, they both went along as great friends.

To me, this historical fiction book is great! I like historical fiction because I can learn about and from the past. During the Second World War, three-and-a-half million children found themselves suddenly sent thousands of miles from home to a completely foreign country for safety and to stay with strangers. Around 15, 000 British children were evacuated to Canada between July and September 1940. The tragic sinking of SS The City of Benares put an end to the evacuation plans. All the children evacuated overseas found warm welcoming homes. Canada, Australia, the United States, New Zealand and South Africa were the countries offered homes to British Children.

The book was published in 1989.

The Sky is Falling received the Mr. Christie Book Award, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for young people, and the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year of Children. Hope you like this book if you read it. I really liked the plot. I also liked the characters but not Mrs. Ogilvie because she was strict with Norah and she also wasn’t paying attention to Norah.

Kit Pearson was born in Edmonton, Canada. She graduated in English at the University of Alberta before going on to get her MLS at the University of BC and an MA in children’s literature at the Study of the Children’s Literature, Simons College, Boston. She is a former librarian as well as a writer. Kit Pearson imagined two kids that didn’t like evacuating England. Most children who were evacuated to Canada liked it there. Kit Pearson wrote two other books in the same series. Her latest book, Awake and Dreaming, won the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature.

She now lives in Vancouver B.C. with her 2 lively terriers. In all, he wrote six other books: This Land. Awake and Dreaming, Looking at the Moon, The Sky is Falling, A Handful of Time, and The Daring Game.