The Silver Sword

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The superintendent had also received a letter from the International Tracing Service who had received a letter from Kurt, along with the Silver Sword. Ruth, Bronia, and Jan then made their way to Posen and eventually found Edek at a refugee feeding station; he was suffering from tuberculosis. This impetus reflects the Serrailliers’ recognition of the need to provide teenage audiences with books with timely, contemporary themes which would be of immediate appeal. With the help of many people (including Germans) who had chosen to fight Hitler's tyranny he eventually joined the Allies.

Some of these adjustments were relatively clear cut, and combined the need to reduce the length of books as well as ensuring their contents would be suitable for the intended audience.Despite his appreciation of the book’s qualities, however, Serraillier expressed doubts that the all-important second audience – the teachers – would react in a similarly positive way to the book. First, there is the demoralizing nature of the bureaucratic and military apparatuses set up during the postwar period. Bistro, the chimp, is immediately respectful to him; Jan leads him down the street back to the zookeepers. Serraillier’s concern that The Silver Sword was not to be seen as glorifying violence is echoed here: adult themes are present for a reason, rather than simply providing cheap thrills. When Ruth woke up, she was finally reunited with her father and then her mother in Switzerland, along with Edek, Bronia and Jan.

However, one has to remember the complications of finances, naturalisation, foreign travel, the general destruction wrought upon the European infrastructure etc. Significantly none came from children, by whom this story is remembered with gratitude because it treated them as responsible citizens who could be trusted with a frank account of what the war and its by-products, like juvenile delinquency and refugees, was really about.It was an attitude that was increasingly gaining traction amongst educators and other decision-makers, in line with a growing awareness of the need to provide appropriate material to help young people bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood. This contention raises interesting questions about the potential disconnect between how children view their passage to adulthood and how this transition is perceived by adults. He tells him that he will give him the sword if he promises to tell the children, if he sees them, about their father and how he has gone to Switzerland where their grandparents live. As Evelyn Arizpe observes, “a decontextualised focus on the journey or on the arrival often means the historical and political circumstances that led to displacement in the first place are ignored” ( 2021, p.

Not only did the Serrailliers have to keep in mind the differences between a reader at the bottom end of their age range (11 years old) and at the top (16 years old) and the progress between the two, but also the adult gatekeepers of this material: the teachers. During his editorship of New Windmill – a period of time which stretched over thirty years, during which he was joined by his wife Anne Serraillier – the list was to become a major source of what modern readers would recognise as Young Adult fiction. Their son Rudolf died fighting in the war and Jan struggles to reconcile these two positions: “That there could be any connection between these homely folk and the soldier in the photo was beyond his understanding.This more thoughtful style is revealed particularly clearly in an episode of The Silver Sword which describes the children’s conversations with the Wolffs, a German farmer and his wife who temporarily provide shelter.