Maw Books

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Lily’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff, a 1998 Newbery Honor, is set on the American home front during World War II and gives a snapshot of what many dealt with why their family members were on the front lines.  Every year, Lily spends her the summer in Rockaway, at her families summer house by the Atlantic Ocean.  But this year, it’s just her and her grandmother as her father is overseas fighting in the war.  And to make matters worse, her very best friend has moved to a wartime factory town.  She finds herself alone, with no friends.  That is until Albert, a refugee from Hungary shows up.  His parents have died for standing up to Hitler’s regime and his little sister has been left behind in Europe.  They soon become the most unlikely of friends, but Lily has a problem.  She lies.  All the time.  She just can’t help herself.  So when she tells Albert the biggest lie of all, it almost costs Albert his life.

In a teachers guide, Patricia Reilly Giff says the following:

Lily’s Crossing was about my childhood. I was inspired to write that because for years, I thought about my childhood during the Second World War, in Rockaway, New York, which I loved. We didn’t sleep in Rockaway, we didn’t have a cabin there, but we went there almost every day in the summertime. I loved the water. I was clumsy out of the water, but in the water, I could swim. I was good around boats, so I always felt good about it. So I thought one day that I would write Lily, and it took me about four years to finally do it.

The book is fiction, but it’s based on so much that I did do. I am Lily; I am the grandmother. The bakery really existed, but it was in St. Albans, where I grew up. And Albert is a composite of many boys in my life when I was growing up.

Certainly, we went to the bakery alone–and during the war, when the baker couldn’t get eggs or sugar, the offerings were pretty slim in the bakery. There were signs up, like “loose lips sink ships.” It was wartime and when I went to bed at night, I’d look out the window and see the search lights and always worry that the German planes were coming. I was afraid a lot, and so the time period is real, the story is fiction, but the setting, the background, is true.

When my sister, Anne, was born, my mother put stars up on her bedroom ceiling, over the windows, and they were beautiful. Eventually, they dried a little in the back and once in a while, a star would float down from my sister’s ceiling onto the bed or onto the floor and we called them “falling stars,” we thought they were magic. So, putting the stars on the ceiling reminded me of my childhood, my sister’s childhood of that time, during the Second World War.

As you can see, it’s a great book for younger readers to go back into the past and learn of a time that was difficult for many.  I love books that connect with the author’s background.  Lily was a great character with a great voice.  Having read a couple of other books this year about young girls with family members going to war (Shooting the Moon and Jimmy’s Stars), I’d have to admit that this was not my favorite among them but it’s still not one to be missed.

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