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Book Summary and Reviews of Love to Everyone by Hilary McKay

Love to Everyone by Hilary McKay

Love to Everyone

UK Title: The Skylarks's War

by Hilary McKay

  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2018, 336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The Penderwicks meets Warhorse in this charming story about a girl who is fighting for her independence during World War I, from award-winning author Hilary McKay.

Clarry Penrose finds the good in everyone. Even in her father, who isn't fond of children, and especially girls. He doesn't worry about her education, because he knows she won't need it. Her grandparents, who care for her in the summers, assume that she'll play nicely and do what she's told. It's the early twentieth century, after all, and the only thing girls are expected to do is behave.

But Clarry longs for a life of her own. She wants to dive off cliffs and go swimming with her brother Peter and cousin Rupert. And more than anything, she wants to get an education. She helps Peter with his homework all the time, so why can't she manage it by herself? When war breaks out, Clarry is shocked to find that Rupert has enlisted, but she focuses on her schoolwork. Then Rupert is declared missing, and Clarry is devastated. Now she must take a momentous step into the wide world - for if she misses this chance, she may never make it.

From award-winning author Hilary McKay comes an inspirational, funny, and heartwarming story about a girl who dares to open doors that the world would rather keep closed.

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Book Awards

  • award image Costa Book Awards, 2018

Reviews

Media Reviews

"This book is agony and ecstasy, and never have I read such a human and accessible account of World War I. Vivid, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Hilary McKay's radiant characters touch my heart like real people, friends and loved ones I know well. Possibly the finest writer of our time." - Elizabeth Wein, New York Times-bestelling author of Code Name Verity and The Pearl Thief

"I thoroughly loved Love to Everyone. The story is at once intimate and sweeping, with Clarry the shining heart of it all." - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The War That Saved My Life

"I LOVED Love to Everyone. Hilary McKay is a genius. It's the best children's book I've read this year." - Katherine Rundell, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award-winning author of Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms

"Starred Review. McKay manages a near-miraculous balance of light and joyous touch with sometimes serious and even heartbreaking material." - BCCB

"Starred Review. Though love, pain, and loss shape this emotionally resonant story of coming of age in turbulent times, the ending is quietly hopeful and wholly satisfying." - Booklist

"Hilary McKay is a genius. This beautiful book is so many things simultaneously: complex and subtle, beautiful and raw, timely and timeless. I never wanted it to end." - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, William A. Morris Award finalist author of The Smell of Other People's Houses

"I laughed, I cried and I wanted all the characters to be my best friend." - Natasha Farrant, author of The Children of Castle Rock and Lydia: The Wild Girl of Pride and Prejudice

"Hilary McKay's novel is about love as much as war: the effect on children of being deprived of it and the beneficial results on adults of its persistence. McKay is incapable of writing an uninteresting character or a dull scene... I loved it." - Mary Hoffman, New York Times-bestselling author of Stravaganza and Amazing Grace

This information about Love to Everyone was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

billy

love to everyone
Super good!

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Author Information

Hilary McKay Author Biography

Photo: © scholastic

Hilary McKay is the award-winning author of Love to Everyone, Binny Bewitched (which was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year and received two starred reviews), Binny in Secret (which received three starred reviews), Binny for Short (which received four starred reviews), and six novels about the Casson family: Saffy's Angel, Indigo's Star, Permanent Rose, Caddy Ever After, Forever Rose, and Caddy's World. She is also the author of Wishing for Tomorrow, the sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess. Hilary lives with her family in Derbyshire, England. Department. She enjoyed the work but at the same time had a burning desire to write. After the birth of her two children, she wanted to devote more time to bringing up her children and writing.

McKay says that one of the ...

... Full Biography
Link to Hilary McKay's Website

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