War and Peace: A Collection of Classic Poetry and Prose

＂It is through the literature you’ll find in this book that we can all come to a closer understanding of war, how it is to fight it, to live through it, the pain and the pity of it. Only with this kind of understanding universally shared can we one day perhaps really make war a thing of the past.＂--Michael Morpurgo, from his introduction

From ＂In Flanders Fields＂ by John McCrae (1872-1918):

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

Selected especially for younger readers, War and Peace is a collection of easily accessible yet highly moving poems and prose passages selected from sources ranging from the Bible to the poets of World War I, including some of the best-loved pieces of American literature. Here are poets and writers who came face to face with the terror, the triumph, and the pity of war.

From William Blake to Wilfred Owen and Walt Whitman, from Agincourt to Waterloo, and from the Aeneid to Pride and Prejudice, this compelling anthology shows the power and the sadness of war, its glories and its miseries thoughtfully set against the calm tranquility of peace.

Kate Agnew has chaired the Children’s Booksellers Association and has served as a judge for the Smarties Prize and the Whitbread Award. She was a contributor to the Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books and co-wrote Children at War with Geoff Fox. In 1999 she won a special British Book Award for her contribution to the National Year of Reading.

Michael Morpurgo was awarded an MBE in 1999 for service to youth. His books have won the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Book Prize, the Children’s Book Award and the Cercle D’Or Priz Sorciere (France). He is also the author of the phenomally successful War Horse which was adapted into an multi-award-winning West End show. It has since transferred to Broadway.