I finally read it the other day and I needn't have worried, Kate Saunders picks up the story and flawlessly drops it down 9 years later. As a standalone book, I'm not entirely sure Five Children on the Western Front "works" - but it comes close.

Not only in what their future held in relation to the great war but also, to an equal extent, in relation to departing the wonderful age of innocence that Nesbit had let them experience in her own trilogies. She was, with Sandi Toksvig, a guest on the first episode of the long-running news quiz program Have I Got News For You. Anthea then makes an off-handed comment that when she looked at the photos on the wall she saw plenty of ladies who looked like young versions of their mother but she couldn’t find the boys.She puts in enough details from the previous books in the series to gratify the Nesbit fans of the world (few though they might be) while also catching the reader up on everything that came before in a bright, brisk manner. I think novels have moved on since then for the better, they are far more complex and so more than just tell a good story now. The children Nesbit depicts are both freed from the Victorian rules of their parents and more restricted than children of the mid-20th century, and as such, they live in a sort of golden, idyllic England that only existed for a very brief fragment of time.

It gives a picture of war and of attitudes of the time but in a way that children will relate to and find interesting. Some scenes like the museum trip are lively and other scenes very emotive especially towards the end.Have you ever wondered what happened to the Five Children and It characters when the First World War began? This book illustrates wonderfully how hard the war was, not just on the soldiers, but on the families (and Sand Fairies! It has been wonderful for me to revisit the Psammead and for my children (who have only seen the movie) to get or know more about him.