Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
No Moon
Historical Fiction
For ages 8 to 12
Tundra Books, 2010 ISBN: 978-0887769719
Fourteen year-old Louise Gardner has left school, and she is now helping her mother to care for the house and her younger siblings. She wishes she could work in one of the local factories, like so many other girls are doing, but her father refuses to allow his daughter to “slave over a machine and look like an old woman by the time she’s sixteen.”
Louise is delighted when a friend helps her get a job as a nursery maid in the home of Lord and Lady Milton. Louise soon grows to love the two little girls in her care, but she has a hard time working under the rule of Nanny Mackintosh, a “rigid” woman who does not seem to like children at all. Try as she might, Louise cannot seem to please her superior.
Some months after she joins the household of Lord and Lady Milton, Lady Milton decides that she wants to visit her sister in America. The family will travel on the newest and most luxurious ship, the Titanic. After Nanny Mackintosh hurts herself in a fall, Lady Milton asks Louisa to go with them. Ever since her little brother drowned in the sea, Louisa has had a mortal fear of water and she is terrified of going on the ship. Unfortunately, she simply cannot afford to lose her job, so she agrees to go along. Little does she know that this is a journey that will change her life forever.
In this exceptional book, Irene K. Watts gives readers a picture of what it must have been like to travel on the Titanic. In addition, she shows us what it was like to be a working class teenager who had to work for a living, and who had to accept her position in the social order without complaint. Readers will enjoy seeing how Louisa grows, how she finds courage to deal with life’s challenges, and how she learns to stand up for what she believes in.
