The White Mouse: The Story of Nancy Wake product reviews

I am fascinated about the story of Nancy Wake and have done a bit of reading and viewing of her history. This book calls her an Australian woman, when she is actually New Zealand born. However this fact aside, it is a solid recount of her legacy.

The images in this book are interesting and for some reason remind me of the old Tin Tin books. It has many good images that illustrate what is going on, so it helps young minds comprehend the complex story line. I love the details of old papers and the story written on note paper on the pages. It gives it a very authentic feel and adds depth to the discussions you have around the page.

This is a good sized book, with good quality pages that are easy to turn and thick enough to let children touch and point to different thing. The price is a little more than I would normally pay for a children's book, however the content it covers and the detailed illustrations make it worth the extra little bit.

This book takes awhile to read, it is long and there is a lot of information on each page. It would work well for young teenagers as well. It would work well in a school setting and I am hoping to try it out in the classroom at some stage. This would be a wonderful gift for a young girl, who is interested in strong female role models, and getting to know some 'underground' history with a local twist. Nancy Wake is a very interesting character!

I wanted to read this book with my kids as I am always looking for something well written as well as something that features a strong female role model in it, as this book quite clearly does. When my son got this book out of the box he was straight away firing questions out at me about who she was, what was she doing and his biggest question, why. With just the four words on the book cover, Nurse - Reporter - Rebel - Spy, I was able to teach my children quite a bit.

This isn't a book that you could read to your kids in one sitting, certainly not my six and eight year old's but it wasn't really a book that I needed to read to them in one sitting as there was quite a lot for them to process and it seemed like an endless line of questions from them both about who, what and why. The language isn't complicated, which makes it perfect for little ears, and nothing is too descriptive, ie. they don't go into exactly how Nancy was tortured etc. This gives a good bio for someone new to the story of Nancy and it has left my kids wanting to know about more people like her and what they've done in the past.

With some lovely illustrations that fit the story perfectly, a story well written and an amazing woman... Great book.