Little Girl Lost - Barbie Probert-Wright

I came across this book lying around at work, and a quick glance at the cover found me initially thinking that this was another of those 'misery literature' books that have became so popular. As I am not really interested in that type of book, and also being mindful of the fact that many of them are said to have been fabricated by the writer in order to cash in on the popularity of the genre, I was about to put this back. However, turning the book over and reading the back cover, I quickly realised this was in fact an account of a journey a seven year old girl and her older sister made to try and get home back in 1945 in war-torn Germany. As I read the ...  Read the complete review

Would you walk across Germany during a war? No, neither would I but that is what Eva and her sister Barbie found themselves doing. This book is a true story and has been written by Barbie Probert-Wright with the help of Jean Ritchie. She starts the book telling us about her happy childhood living in Hamburg. She had just had her second birthday but all across Europe the second world war was spreading. She says how she was relatively unaffected by the war and had not even thought about it, she was actually too young at the time to even know what was going on. Barbie lived with her family, her Mutti (mother) Father, sisters Eva and Ruth in a ...  Read the complete review

This amazing book is in short a view from a different side, a reverse story, in the Englishman's eyes that is. The book chronicles the early life of the Author Barbel (Barbie), leading up to the momentous journey that is to change hers and her older sister Eva's lives forever. The story starts with the afore mentioned author, at the age of six, being completely oblivious to the war that is raging around her. Her life is idyllic with her beloved mother (Mutti), father (who has a job that exempts him from the inevitable draft), her eldest sister Ruth and her other older sister Eva, all living more than comfortably in Hamburg. The book plods along ...  Read the complete review