Quite heartbreaking and the author needs commending for writing this as a YA novel! Recommended for everyone. ( )

A boy called Jim inherits his Great-Grandfather's diary on his 16th birthday. This diary tells of another Jim at 16 - one who lied about his age and joined the army to fight in the Great War after his father ( also a soldier) was killed and his mother died of a broken heart. With only the love of his girlfriend Anne to sustain him, Jim travels to the Somme in France where he endures the hardship of battle life (lice, mud, hunger and the treat of death) and makes life-long friends with the soldiers around him. Told in the form of letters/diary entries to Anne, each entry is interspersed with an actual news clipping of something that happened during that time. There is also poetry and official war letters such as the one informing Jim's mother of his father's death. An easy to read , sometimes harrowing book about the spiritual wasteland that was the French battlefields in WW1.

A really good young adult book about the WWI front in Europe. ( )