Dear Jelly: Family Letters from the First World War

Excellent. Engaging read.

An interesting way to describe to children what happened during the war, which they enjoyed and found exciting.

This slight slice of history has an enormous impact through its naivety and simplicity. These few annotated and humorously illustrated letters from the Front back home to the soldiers' young sisters have a poignancy that a 700 page novel will always lack.The Semple family is really just another British family who suffered such a loss during WW1.These letters are most moving by what they miss out. The soldiers Bill and Bob send home idealised records to their young sisters almost writing as if they are having a great adventure and that the trenches and tents are fun, though Robert can not disguise his loathing of the mud and later the lack of fresh water in which to wash.Since both these letter-writing brothers did not survive the war the letters are now more than archives they are witnesses to the pointlessness of it all and that too many of war's victims are little more than children

Most folks around now aren't familiar with the first world war and the occasional documentary on the history channel or article appearing during armistice day refreshes the dim memory of being taught about it at school.This is a deep introduction, from a child's viewpoint bringing to life the account of two young brothers that were little more than children themselves. The illustrations sketches and poems that give the sepia-toned feel and the small lined commentary for adults gives the historical footnotes and explanations of each letter- which I found to easy to skip when my eldest asked me to explain the pictures. The unspoken horror that seeps through these is dependent on your knowledge of what happened at the time.I would recommend this to have around during the season of the poppy appeal- for the older children. It brings home the sacrifices made during world war one and what a crazy war it was in the ease of which loss of life was allowed.

Dear Jelly serves as a good introduction to World War 1 for younger children, 8 years +. The facts are presented in a way that makes them accessible to younger students of history and there's a nice balance between the harsh reality of events and the poignant letters William and Robert Semple sent to their family at home.The book begins with an introduction to the Semple family and moves forward to chart the experiences of the two men as they fought in France from 1914 to 1918. The chapters are broken up into years with each one preceded by a short, factual account of events at that time.Dear Jelly ends with a brief summary of the Semple family after the war along with an introduction to War Graves, Memorials, Armistice Day and The relevance of the Poppy. I thought the inclusion of a First World War Timeline and Glossary of terms a nice addition.The book is in black and white format and a small sized volume running to a total of 96 pages. The text is accompanied by a wide variety of small sketches, doodles, illustrations and photos.

Others have commented on the age range for which this book is suitable (8 years and older, or Key Stage 2), and its appeal as a resource for school project work.It is certainly useful as a readily digestible introduction to the First World War as it was fought in northern France and Belgium. That the conflict was wider than that is acknowledged, but little detail of the wider aspects is provided - not least because the two brothers whose letters home are reproduced fought exclusively on the north-western European front.To some extent it is surprising how much of the conditions at the front - the mud, the trenches, comrades suddenly shot dead, boredom, cold, rain, chronic over-tiredness, their own guns and mortars, the enemy's aeroplanes, bombs and shells - the army censor allowed them to describe, complete with rather clever little cartoons in many cases.On the other hand, once reports on personal health and good spirits, propaganda-ish remarks about the German enemy and responses to news received from home are stripped out, many of the letters don't actually impart much information. Detail of features of the rest sites, well behind the lines, is notably greater than that of conditions at the front, but still the brothers stop well short of indicating exactly where they were. (My granny believed to her dying day that her husband fought and was killed in France. Maybe he thought that too. We now know he was in Passchendaele, near Ypres, Belgium.)But that's how it was, and it is good that young people today have the opportunity through this book to immerse themselves in the letters - and the generally very informative and helpful commentary spun around them. Many of them won't need much encouragement to reflect on the implications for prospects of personal safety and future life and health of reports of shell holes all around a position where one of the brothers happened to be, or of a bomb or shell falling rather close-by. For the sisters receiving these letters, and their parents, there is plenty of material to fuel a deep anxiety that the war should soon end and the two brothers return safely home.Just once, I found in the commentary what I believe to be an error. It is stated that barrage balloons were used to spy on enemy trenches. Were they used in the First World War? If they were, surely their purpose (as in the Second World War) would have been to keep low-flying aircraft at bay, even snag the aircraft and bring them down. The aircraft were used for observation, but it is hard to see how the balloons could have been used for that. Any hero who went up with one would have provided a sitting duck for target practice.For me, the most intriguing piece of new information in the book was that, as an officer, a Second Lieutenant, one at least of the brothers was required to cash Postal Orders for the 25 to 40 men under his command. Fortunately, the Postal Orders tended to be of low value, for he had no way of turning them back to cash - and therefore mailed them to his sisters as a gift.