"In 1940, I lived with my father in the town of Deal, on the Kent coast of England, safe from the thunder of the Germans' guns in France. Some days in May I could hear it, rolling in big booms across the English Channel. Some days I could feel it, rattling the glass in the windows on our street." So writes a girl who climbed into her brother's clothes and then - unbidden - onto her father's fishing boat to become part of the Amotley group of ships," an armada crossing the Channel to rescue the British soldiers trapped on the sandy beaches of France. Thousands of soldiers were saved by that now legendary civilian armada. Fright, drama and simple heroics are described almost poetically by a girl looking all the while for her brother John but seeing, instead, the horrific details of an army in retreat. Foreman's watercolors vividly expand the first person narrative, while the overall design of the volume adds urgency. An author's note provides facts about this historic effort and an excerpt from Winston Churchill's June 4 speech to Parliament - welcome reality from pages otherwise too amazing to be believed. (Ages 8-12)

The dramatic story of the historic rescue of over 300,000 men from the beach of Dunkirk by "the little ships" - an incredible armada of over 800 craft, including Royal Navy ships and a flotilla of small river and coastal boats who sailed across the English Channel to Dunkirk in France to rescue the besieged troops. This is the story of one small fishing craft from Deal that was part of the armada, told from the point of view of a young girl who donned her brother's old clothes and sailed with her father on the family boat, the Lucy. In May 1940, many countries in Europe were at war with Nazi Germany. Half a million British and French soldiers were trapped on three sides in northern France by German troops and tanks. The only escape for the Allied army was the sea. The wide Dunkirk beach was covered with men who were hungry and thirsty, with horses running loose from their French riders, with dozens of barking dogs, with trucks and equipment - the disarray of an army on the run. Thanks to the heroic rescue mission by "the little ships", the men were saved and brought back to England.