Jan 6, 2010
"Simon" is the longest and best written of Miss Sutcliff's books, appealing more to readers over twelve. It pictures England of the Civil War in 1640, focusing on the campaign in Devon and the west country, showing how a teen-age boy came to take his share in the fighting, and what happened to his friendship for his neighbor and friend who fought with the Royalists. The battles, the journeys, the narrow escapes, are done with vigorous realism. The setting, always vivid with this writer, is most memorable here, for this is country she knows well. There is romance, for the older girls who like "costume" stories, but chiefly it is for those boys who love old battles with youth as hero whether or not the war is one they have met already in history.
Louise S. Bechtel, in her review of "Simon," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review (© I.H.T. Corporation), May 16, 1954, p. 21.
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