Introducing THE WAR LANTERN, historical fiction for middle grade readers ...

 

The War Lantern is coming October 2026 from my publisher, DCB Young Readers. Consider this amazing cover revealed!

Here's more about the book: 

"On February 27, 1941, bombs fall, families vanish, and the war lantern burns …

In England, fifteen-year-old schoolboy Marcus isn’t supposed to tell anyone about his work at Parnall’s Aircraft Factory, not even his mother, for fear of Hitler’s spies. 

In Germany, fourteen-year-old Gisele’s baby brother is about to be taken away by Nazi officials, who deem him “life not worthy of life.” 

Overhead, Tail End Charlie, an underage Royal Air Force rear gunner, flies for a German steel factory behind a squadron of bombers.

Each lead seemingly separate lives, struggling to survive amid World War II, until the roar of bombs — and the silence in the aftermath — connects them all.

Inspired by her family history, Governor General’s Literary Award–winning author Philippa Dowding delivers a carefully researched and powerfully moving wartime story for young readers about family, connections, and resilience."

The author's father,
England, 1941

PRE-ORDER! I'm delighted to also announce that Indigo, the national bookseller, has just selected The War Lantern as a Most Anticipated Book for Fall 2026 in the children's category! (You can pre-order your copy now, and pre-orders =  book 💕!)

I'm just delighted to have this book ready for the world; it's been a 7-year project but really a lifetime in the making. My thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous Research and Creation grant, as well the Ontario Arts Council for their support. Most of all, thanks to my wonderful publisher for making it happen and to my father for sharing his wartime survival story. 

In the coming months, I'll be posting about the journey of writing historical fiction for children, some of the most challenging writing I've ever done. I'm grateful for all the help I've had along the way.

The moment of truth for a new manuscript ...

Author with her manuscript. 

"The main challenge of researching and writing this book was learning to cope with the daily, relentless exposure to the horror of war ... " 

- P Dowding, Final Grant Report Excerpt, May, 2024

Yesterday, I printed out the manuscript for my next book for the first time. It's a WWII story for middle-grade readers.

This is a big step and part of the process for me, but it's scary. 

My writing process is always to take a story as FAR as I can on screen, then when I've got a real first draft with a beginning, middle, and end, I print it out. It's also a tipping point when I feel like I JUST can't look at this book on the screen anymore, because I can no longer see it, connect to it, love it.

It's a moment of truth to hold a printed manuscript for the first time.

So many questions...

Does this neural capture of symbols work? Do the symbols I assembled on the page in this particular order add up to something that is moving, interesting, reflective of my first impulse to assemble them? Will this particular assembling mean something to me, to others, and is it an assemblage that I can be invested in for all time?

Is this symbol assembly (all 230,866 of them) ANY GOOD?

This manuscript is a war story for middle-grade readers set in WWII, and based on my father's experience as a 15-year-old on a particular day in 1941. There's a new genre of auto-fiction for me here, plus a deeply personal family story. The story also explores a fictional German's experience, which is frankly terrifying. I learned a lot more than I expected about Nazi Germany and how it manipulated children. 

Author at the Gloucestershire Archives,
Gloucester UK, September 2023

A massive amount of research has gone into this manuscript, including a trip to England last fall to visit various archives and bomb sites. 

Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous Research and Creation grant which allowed me to write this book. I'm planning upcoming posts about the experience of writing a Canada Council for the Arts grant proposal: what to do if you get the grant (take it!); doing the research; writing the final report. For me, it's been a truly fascinating and rewarding 18-month cycle from grant proposal to the photo above, me holding the printed manuscript for the first time. 

Per Ardua Ad Astra, Bomber Memorial, UK, 2023

Obviously, there's still much to do. Massage story, fact-check every historical item with my notes. Here's a tip: do not trust your memory of the researched facts to be accurate. It almost never is, which is astonishing. I have two university degrees (one is an MA), I've researched dozens of papers, but this is completely different. Further steps also include creating a "backmatter" section with links and addenda. I need to get the manuscript to my editor soon-ish, for his first read. Time presses on!

I'll leave you with my final sentences for the CCA report. The question was, "explain your main achievements and challenges in writing this book." The achievements were easy, the challenges not. 

A partial excerpt of my answer to the last part: 

"The main challenge of researching and writing this book was learning to cope with the daily, relentless exposure to the horror of war. What seemed like a story worth telling, became a constant battle to not look away. I had to learn to limit my exposure, to find ways to mitigate what I was discovering ... "

That's the truth of it, friends. Writing historical war fiction for kids is a constant battle to not look away. But it seems like a more important challenge than ever. Let us not look away from war, let's look at war together and remind the next generation, as gently as we can, that they can choose alternatives. I truly hope that this is what the manuscript I hold in my hands suggests, that was my intention. Stay tuned!

I have another book about war for kids, OCULUM ECHO (2022). It's a dystopian cli-fi, with war and pandemic, the sequel to OCULUM (2018), which was nominated for several reader's choice awards. Read a 5-star review here.

All blog posts about this new book and the Research and Creation Grant.

FYI, I haven't settled on a final title for the book yet! Stay tuned on that too.

OCULUM ECHO is a CCBC Best Book 2023!

 

What an honour to see my latest book, OCULUM ECHO, noted in the Canadian Children's Book Centre's BEST BOOKS 2023, thank you! You'll find the review in the Spring 2023 edition.

This book is the sequel to my middle-grade dystopia, OCULUM, which was nominated for the OLA Silver Birch award and the SYRCA Diamond Willow award, thank you to those nominating committees. The series is called The Children of Oculum.

It takes courage and skill to write a speculative dystopia for children, to explore big issues in an age-appropriate way. I think Lois Lowry's The Giver does that well, so do books like Ender's Game and even the first dystopia I ever read, The White Mountains (by John Christopher, a bit dated but still relevant). You probably have your own favourite middle-grade dystopia, and if so, please send me a line and share it with me.

OCULUM ECHO has had terrific reviews (including this 5-star review in CM magazine), and has been well-received, also getting the CBC nod for The Best Books for Kids in 2022. The book is relevant, close to what is happening in the world right now. I think that's our job as children's authors: to tell the truth, to be honest in an age-appropriate way, to get the next generation to think about the world we live in, and the world they'd like to create.

The story has a non-binary AI, Echo1, a sweet amalgam of all my SF influences, from Frankenstein's creature to TNG's Data, Martha Wells' Murderbot, even ChatGPT and more. The book also further explores the themes of climate collapse, pandemic, and privilege from the first book. That book, OCULUM, was published in 2018 and written in 2015, long before many took the climate crisis very seriously or had ever heard of COVID19.

In another stroke of prescience (and what are writers if not futurists?), in OCULUM ECHO I also included a warlike group called the UnRuly, who have found an ancient weapon but have no idea of its power. Again, I wrote this book mostly in 2020 and 2021, long before the latest war erupted in Europe. Will there always be war? Maybe. Was it a stretch to create this element of the story? Not really, looking at our recent and distant history.

I think children need this book right now, and other well-written dystopian books like it. They need funny books, and scary books, and light-hearted books too, but they also need someone to guide them through some of the big issues with characters they trust. I hope Miranda1, Echo1, and Mannfred are those voices, offering guidance, courage, and hope to the next generation of readers.  

There is a third book in the series, OCULUM SCRIBE, the end of the trilogy. The first draft is finished, so stay tuned!

More about OCULUM AND OCULUM ECHO on this blog