Gina Cowan

Ena's War Gina Cowan

What was it like to be child in wartime Glasgow?

This book gives a personal view of the conditions of that time. Many older readers will identify with Ena and recall their own memories of those times. Younger readers will be transported to a time before TVs, laptops, nintendos and mobile phones.

Although this is no text book, it could be used as part of a project on WW2 in schools.

Find out more about street games, evacuation, diphtheria and literal nit-picking. This is not a 'misery' book. In spite of restrictions and poverty, Ena had a very happy childhood. The incident of the 'Clootie Dumpling' reveals the astonishing outcome when a food parcel arrives from Australia with unexpected contents.

How did Ena deal with bullying?

How did Ena and her brother lose Mum's last half-crown?

How did children use substitutes for rationed sweets? They used cocoa powder dipped in sugar, cinnamon sticks and hard liquorice sticks from the chemists to make sugarolly water and sticks of rhubarb sweetened with a tiny drop of sugar.

Ena had diphtheria and was removed to a fever hospital. Through her eyes we see the strange environment she entered and the frightening events she had to endure, while isolation meant no visitors for six weeks. Some of these events are hilarious when viewed from an adult point of view.

Read of Ena's play acting as 'Christopher Robin' and an organ grinder's monkey in Girls' Guildry displays. Find out about her unexpected introduction to the countryside where she couldn't distinguish between cows and bulls and how she came to be travelling, without adult supervision, in the guard's van of a train with two other children on an exciting adventure.