Once Upon A Wartime
The Imperial War Museum’s Once Upon A Wartime exhibition explores and brings to life five children’s war novels in a stylish and informative, but not particularly fun, way.
Image’s original source: http://www.iwm.org.uk
Like the children I visted the museum with, I suffered from not having read any of the five books in the exhibition:
- War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
- The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier
- Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden
- The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall
- Little Soldier by Bernard Ashley
Each gallery within the exhibition brought one of the books to life, explaining the author’s writing process, the historical contents and some of the key features of the book. In the War Horse section, the role of cavalry horses in World War One was explored. In Carrie’s War, there was a lifelike model of the kitchen table where the children could…well, sit down. As if they were at a real kitchen table. There was also an air raid shelter to crawl into, some big blocks to build with and an interactive quiz about The Silver Sword But there was nothing that really excited the children.
Admittedly, my expectations for the exhibition were, like the entry price, rather high. I hoped that it would be interesting for me and, because it was about children’s books, be fun and informative for the children - and would also inspire them to want to read the books.
Diane Lees, the Director-General of the Imperial War Museum, publicised the Once Upon A Wartime exhibition by saying: “…focusing on these extraordinary fictional accounts of conflicts is an innovative and, we hope successful, way of helping children, and adults, understand the experience of war.”
In that aim, I suppose the exhibition was a success. We all left the exhibition with some level of understanding of the experience of war. But as a writer and a father, I hoped it would have another goal: to inspire children to want to read.
And perhaps because sitting at a kitchen table wasn’t quite as exciting as the exhibitors might have hoped, the fun factor that might have brought about that inspiration just wasn’t there. Everything was stylishly wrought, and the objects were all clearly displayed, but it wasn’t interactive enough to retain the interest of non-readers.
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2011 at 8:03 am and is filed under Short Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
