Lord Of The Nutcracker Men (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
This review is part of my Poppies & Prose feature. You can find out more about it here. “Below me were my wooden soldiers. The nutcracker men were hidden in the dark shadows of the tree and the wall, but the moonlight gleamed on my Frenchmen and my Tommies…The guns in France pounded away with their faint little thunder, and I thought that my real dad would be just like my model, wide awake, watching the sky.”This was one of those rare, wonderful books that you read without knowing anything about. The idea of the book fascinated me: a toy maker is drafted to the trenches and sends carved soldiers that he sees to his ten year old son, Johnny, back in England. As Johnny collects the toy soldiers and creates an army to fight back the strong nutcracker soldiers that his dad made him before he went, he notices that the battles he makes up in the mud under the beech tree are becoming more like the ones that his dad writes about. Doesn’t that sound like a brilliant and unique way of telling a story about a boy whose dad is fighting in WW1?Yes. And it really was. This book had me captivated and I read it within a couple of hours, not realising how much time had passed until I realised that the day had slipped into dusk. Whoops.I was riveted by Johnny’s story (I would also like to be best friends with him) and the unlikely friends he makes while he is living in Kent, avoiding the dangers of London. The only thing that is preventing me from giving this book the full five stars were the letters that Johnny received from his dad. And I have to admit I’m still not sure I should be so picky.And I am being picky so please take that into account.I found it very difficult to believe that a father would write to his ten year old son every minute detail of what happened to him when he went over the top . I understand the necessity of telling children the truth about the horrors of the war, or at least explaining that it isn’t like playing with toy soldiers in your back garden, but there is a difference between telling them the truth and scaring the living daylights out of them!Poor Johnny. Surely he would have liked a bit of reassurance that the dad he was already worrying about wasn’t going to die like the men mentioned in the telegrams the postman brings around. But, like I said, I am being picky because if I ignored the niggling in the back of my mind… the letters were really well executed and, as this is really Johnny’s story in England, allowed the reader to get a sense of what is happening over there. And the soldiers that accompanied these letters, becoming more and more twisted and broken, was a really effective and poignant way of illustrating that war, as the tagline suggests, is no longer a game. So I don’t mind admitting that I’m the world’s biggest wuss when it comes to anything that resembles a puppet, clown or ventriloquist dummy. And nutcracker men don’t necessarily come under this category but there was definitely something extremely… eerie isn’t the right word… but well yeah eerie about these little guys. I loved how Mr Lawrence introduced an extremely subtle yet intriguing element of magic within this story. As he states in his author’s note at the end: “There was something about the Great War that inspired the belief in the supernatural”. Whether this was the sightings of apparitions of English archers protecting the soldiers from the Germans on the same ground as they did against the French centuries earlier, ghostly soldiers or the famous case of the Angel of Mons. I thought the mystery behind what was really happening with those wooden soldiers and their influence was in equal measures unnerving and poignant. Oh and one last thing… that last paragraph? Urrrgh, shivers.
The piece of historical fiction is a story of the British homefront during the first months of World War I. The principal figures are a young boy (maybe 12?) and his father. His father was a toy maker; now he’s a soldier in the war. The boy is sent to the country to live with his aunt, while his mother moves to work in a weapons factory. Much of the story is in letters from the boy’s dad. The boy spends much of his time playing with toy soldiers, many of which are carved by his dad. At first all the letters from the dad include carved figures, which get progressively worse and worse (real life to battle), until the aunt actually throws one away because it is so grotesque. There are also stories about a soldier the boy finds, the boy’s relationship to his school teacher, and the boy’s relationship with his aunt. Warnings: Some of the news from the front is pretty gruesome, as is the realization that the soldier the boy finds has a self-inflicted wound so he could come home.
What do You think about Lord Of The Nutcracker Men (2003)?
Lord of the nutcracker is about a ten year old boy,johnny who lives in London England.As any other boy would want to do johnny plays with his nutcracker soldiers his toy maker father makes for him.but in 1914 , Britain is at war with Germany which is the beginning of world war one.He soon learns that his father is going to war in the trenches of France.Every week letters are sent to johnny with a soldier his father curves in the trenches.He still adds it to his army of Huns, Tommies,and Frenchman.But as he reads the horrifying battles his father is in,he realizes the battles are the same he fights with his wooden soldiers.He assumes he has glorious powers that control his nutcracker soldiers.I choose this book because I wanted to know what he meant in summary when he said," But when these games seem to foretell his dad’s real battles, Johnny thinks he possesses godlike powers over his wooden men. He fears he controls his father’s fate, the lives of all the soldiers in no-man’s land, and the outcome of the war itself".That really captured me of reading this book.What i liked about the this book was the letters of johnny's father and how he described the war in the trenches and what I really liked was the letter from Christmas and how he was saying ,the Germans and the British were singing together on that Christmas day and exchanging gifts when they were fighting the day before.
—Kev
The book Lord of the Nutcracker Men is about a ten-year old boy named Johnny who plays war with his army of nutcracker men his toymaker dad makes. But in 1914, the Germans starts war in Europe, and Johnny's dad enlists to fight in the front in France. Letters arrive from Johnny's dad that tell about the things going on in the front and he carves soldiers that encloses the letter. Every time Johnny gets a new wooden soldier and he continues the war he is having with the Huns,Tommies, and Frenchman it seems to be that whatever his father says is actually happening in the game like he and the wooden soldiers are possessed by god like powers and he is afraid he might kill his father in the game of war.I gave this book five stars because it was great how the author described the many feelings of Johnny in the book and overall I enjoyed reading this book about World War 1. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction books.
—Arda Y
Johnny, the narrator, is ten in 1914, and readers his age could learn a valuable perspective on war from his story. It takes him a long time to understand what's going on: he doesn't know why neighbors with German names are leaving London, he thinks it's great when the height requirements for soldiers are lowered so that his father can join up, and he sees war as a game, just like the ones he plays with toy soldiers his father made for him. He's even excited at the prospect of Zeppelin raids nearby, but the same prospect leads his mother to send him to his aunt's in Kent. There, his failure to make friends among his new schoolmates worries him more than the war, and he can't see the reality behind his father's cheerful letters from the front. He must eventually face reality, but the effect is softened by the relative happiness of the ending, which might seem too easy for readers older than Johnny.
—Candy Wood
