Archie's War provides an astonishing insight into what it was like to be a 10 year old child in one of the most important moments in history - the First World War that began in 1914. With its striking scrapbook style - containing flaps and fold-out letters - Archie's War is fun, informative and instantly accessible to a young audience. In the years that follow, until the war ends in 1918, he writes in the book and we experience life through Archie's eyes and learn about his world and his family in an exhilarating collage of strip comics, doodles, drawings, cartoon characters, mementoes, photos, thoughts and jokes.
Marcia Williams captures the Great War through a child's eyes with a fascinating fictional scrapbook including real mementos of the day.
Meet ten-year-old Archie, his family, and best friend in a scrapbook Archie has made himself, full of comic strips and plenty of other memorabilia. The year is 1914, and as the Great War begins, Archie's scrapbook reflects the war's impact on his life and on those who write back from the front. Marcia Williams retains her humor and energy as she employs a new collage style to present an intimate and compelling view of the First World War and its era.
Archie's scrapbook is a thing of beauty. - The Observer
Author
About Marcia Williams
Marcia Williams' mother was a writer and her father was a playwright and theatre director. She spent the early part of her life in Canton, Hong Kong, Nigeria and the Middle East with her mother and diplomat stepfather. She loved books from an early age and remembers being read to almost every night; "I would often be scared, especially by fairy tales, but I never wanted the stories to end." She went to boarding school in Sussex, from where she sent weekly illustrated letters to her parents overseas.
Marcia didn't receive any formal art training. She calls herself "an obsessive illustrator. I've just always done it. I never consciously thought: that's what I want to do." She had a number of jobs, including nursery teacher, which is when she developed her taste for story-telling to young children; "I learnt what they found accessible and what they enjoyed." Giving up teaching to paint, she studied watercolour at Richmond College and held some successful local exhibitions before a friend suggested that she took her work to show Walker Books.
Marcia lives in London and has two grown-up children and three grandchildren, one extra-large dog and a cat.
