The Children’s Book Council of Australia

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The story is told with slow solemnity and sensitivity that is never allowed to sink into sentimentality. In World War I on Christmas Eve, a young Australian soldier walks out into no-man’s-land to free a small robin caught in the barbed wire. The robin symbolises the survival of compassion and hope. The text is sparse and compelling, using the present tense. Subtle use of black and sepia pen and wash capture the bleakness of battlefield, sandbags and barbed wire, contrasting starkly with the sacrificial red of the robin’s breast and the Flanders poppies. The endpapers, tableaux of soldiers in opposing trenches, have a pathos which encapsulates the wasted humanity of war.
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