You Can Help Your Country: English Children's Work during the Second World War

You Can Help Your Country: English Children's Work during the Second World War. By Berry Mayall and Virginia Morrow. Institute of Education, 329pp, Pounds 25.99. ISBN 9780854738892. Published 13 April 2011

When we think of children in the Second World War, a common image is that of evacuees bound for the countryside. The war, and in particular the German air raid attacks that led to the widespread evacuation of children from English cities, put young people in mortal danger. Accordingly, scholars in the field have devoted a great deal of attention to children's sometimes traumatic experiences of bombing and evacuation. But for children, was the war simply an event that happened to them?

A common trend in the literature on childhood in wartime presents young people as passive victims. And yet, as Berry Mayall and Virginia Morrow show, there was so much more to children's experiences than this. Their research focuses on...