There is no doubt that the stone soldier has done the town proud,” Camilla told us. “But he’s clearly seen better days and is beginning to crumble. Once we have removed the soldier, we will create a peaceful area with flowerbeds, a cross and a new bench. The plaque displaying the names of those who died in the war will remain.” Megan and Sean started talking about their poems before we’d even left the classroom. They didn’t seem very happy about it, but they weren’t questioning doing it. En trouwens… Billy Bones heeft Owen en de Soldaat ook als luisterboek uitgegeven. Gratis en voor niks! Bijvoorbeeld te vinden op Soundcloud https://tinyurl.com/Owenendesoldaat When Owen first returned to the battlefields of France on September 1, 1918, after several months of limited service in England, he seemed confident about his decision: “I shall be better able to cry my outcry, playing my part.” Once overseas, however, he wrote to Sassoon chiding him for having urged him to return to France, for having alleged that further exposure to combat would provide him with experience that he could transmute into poetry: “That is my consolation for feeling a fool,” he wrote on September 22, 1918. He was bitterly angry at Clemenceau for expecting the war to be continued and for disregarding casualties even among children in the villages as the Allied troops pursued the German forces. He did not live long enough for this indignation or the war experiences of September and October to become part of his poetry, although both are vividly expressed in his letters.

Included is everything that you need to teach 12 whole class reading sessions, based on the following texts: Owens moeder huilt, zorgt niet langer en het huis ruikt muf. Ze is de laatste twee jaar zichzelf niet en Owen vindt na schooltijd steeds vaker een luisterend oor bij de stenen soldaat in het park, symbool voor een ieder die ooit moest vechten. What? I don’t understand,” I said, my heart racing. “What do you mean they are changing everything?”The soldier stared at the ground with his elbows fixed to his knees. I put my bag to one side and sat in exactly the same way. I focused on the ground and creased my forehead a bit, just like his. We sat there for a moment, our bodies mirroring each other. I still have one of the first poems I wrote when I was around seven. It starts: There was a young girl called Fay Doodle, This moving, modern classic centres not only on kindness and respect for the stories of others, but also being kind to one’s own self too. Owen’s loneliness and struggles are shared with a crumbling stone soldier sitting on a memorial bench in a park, and a relationship based on mutual regard and honouring of the other is forged. Whilst at school, another Miss Honey-esque teacher, Mr Jennings, is trying to do what every good teacher seeks to do: bring Owen out of his shell, and recognise his own skills and powers. The results which follow make for a wonderful story. A clever, thought?provoking story that draws parallels between past and present conflicts, and how we remember those lost so that we can move on” Emma Carroll Although Owen does not use the dream frame in “ Futility,” this poem, like “Strange Meeting,” is also a profound meditation on the horrifying significance of war. As in “Exposure,” the elemental structure of the universe seems out of joint. Unlike the speaker in “Exposure,” however, this one does not doubt that spring will come to warm the frozen battlefield, but he wonders why it should. Even the vital force of the universe—the sun’s energy—no longer nurtures life.

Sassoon called “Strange Meeting” Owen’s masterpiece, the finest elegy by a soldier who fought in World War I. T.S. Eliot, who praised it as “one of the most moving pieces of verse inspired by the war,” recognized that its emotional power lies in Owen’s “technical achievement of great originality.” In “Strange Meeting,” Owen sustains the dreamlike quality by a complex musical pattern, which unifies the poem and leads to an overwhelming sense of war’s waste and a sense of pity that such conditions should continue to exist. John Middleton Murry in 1920 noted the extreme subtlety in Owen’s use of couplets employing assonance and dissonance. Most readers, he said, assumed the poem was in blank verse but wondered why the sound of the words produced in them a cumulative sadness and inexorable uneasiness and why such effects lingered. Owen’s use of slant-rhyme produces, in Murry’s words, a “subterranean ... forged unity, a welded, inexorable massiveness.” It discusses quite a few heavy topics (grief, mental health, anxiety...) in such a short space of time, but so expertly, exactly as I've come to expect from Thompson. Already? B‑but how!” I stuttered. “How can you know that? They can’t take the soldier away. It’s wrong!” I’ve got something to tell you,” I said to the soldier. I could feel a painful lump forming in my throat. “The council said they are going to do up the memorial garden. They want to make a lot of … changes.” Owen heeft een geheim. Dat geheim zit op een bankje in het openbare park op weg naar school. Owen is in zichzelf gekeerd en praat met bijna niemand maar tegen de stenen soldaat die op dat bankje zit wel. Maar dan komt hij te weten wat de gemeente met de soldaat wil doen…There were two significant moments. One was crying reading Charlotte's Web when I was nine –it had a huge impact. I couldn't believe that just words on pieces of paper could have the power to make me cry. I thought that was phenomenal. Owen was such a good kid in such a rough situation (his mother wasn't a bad mother at all, she was just so depressed that she couldn't even feed him or herself). Owen's pain and loss actually made me cry at one point, the fact that a child would connect with a statue instead of being able to connect to the people around him. Megan huffed and said, “That’s not fair. But I guess Mr Jennings doesn’t want to push you if you really don’t want to.”

The book is incredibly well written and I loved that it was on yellow-tinted paper which Barrington Stoke (the publisher)m has purposefully used as it helps readers with dyslexia. The text is simple but emotive and it may possibly appeal to reluctant readers.

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Op weg naar school loopt Owen door een park waarin een herdenkingsplantsoen is ingericht. Het standbeeld van een stenen soldaat op een bankje daar wordt een vriend voor hem. De Britse auteur Lisa Thompson laat in 'Owen en de soldaat' de kracht van herdenken zien.

For my money, Lisa Thompson is one of the greatest treasures we have in contemporary children’s fiction. She effortlessly blends sentiment with skill, creating stories that excite the mind while tugging the heart. A rare, brilliant talent” Maz Evans

It could have been worse, I suppose,” I said as I took the towel off his head and put it and the Coke can in the bin. “At least it isn’t bird poo.” A beautiful tale of a courageous young man who overcomes his fears to stand up for what he believes. Lisa Thompson writes stories that must be written. Here, she sensitively weaves complex ideas of young carers, social anxiety and remembrance into a story that somehow remains light and accessible. William White, "Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): A Bibliography," Serif (2 December 1965): 5-16.
Biography I put my hand on the soldier’s rough arm and rubbed his sleeve. Some of the stone crumbled against my fingers. I could see he was damaged, but surely there must be a way to repair him rather than get rid of him altogether? When I got home, Mum was still in her pyjamas, watching TV on the sofa. I wasn’t really in the mood to be all nice to her.