67 pages • 2 hours read
Kate AlbusA Place to Hang the Moon
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
In June 1940, the three Pearce children attend their grandmother’s funeral. Nine-year-old Anna reads Mary Poppins under a settee. Eleven-year-old Edmund steals sweets and taunts the vicar who presides over the funeral. Twelve-year-old William, feeling the responsibility of being the eldest, greets the elderly funeral attendees, politely accepting their condolences and hollow pleasantries. The attendees must leave the funeral early so the wartime blackout can be observed. England has been at war with Germany since the previous fall; though London has not been bombed, the children gather from the behavior of the adults around them that is imminent.
Edmund does not understand why people discuss deceased people in positive terms even if that person was a “miserable old cow” like their grandmother (6). Though their grandmother was their caretaker since their parents’ death seven years ago, she treated them as if they were “a right pain in the neck” (9). The three siblings wish that their elderly housekeeper, Miss Collins, could care for them. Secretly, William wishes that Miss Collins could be their mother, taking the pressure of looking after the other two children from his shoulders. Though Miss Collins loves the children immensely, she says she is too old to be a proper mother to them. She hopes that their grandmother’s solicitor will have a plan for the children’s care.
Left alone to get ready for bed, William makes up stories about their parents for his younger siblings, neither of whom have memories of them.
Chapter 2 Summary
The children meet with their grandmother’s solicitor, Mr. Harold Engersoll, who speaks in such a roundabout manner that William must translate for Edmund and Anna. Mr. Engersoll says that though the children have an inheritance, there is no guardianship plan for them. Especially in wartime, it is unlikely anyone will want to adopt three children. Mr. Engersoll proposes that they use the recent evacuations to the countryside as an opportunity: They should join the relocation, omit news about their grandmother’s death or their inheritance to their host family, called a “billet,” and endear themselves to that family so that their temporary billet becomes permanent adoption. William thinks this plan is ridiculous and does not want to lie to their host family. Mr. Engersoll admits it is not ideal, but says they have no better options.
A week later, the children pack their things to prepare for their evacuation alongside the children of St. Michael’s, a private school in North London. Their packing lists are sparse, and they are perturbed by the instruction to bring only one book: Anna picks A Little Princess, Edmund selects The Count of Monte Cristo, and William packs the fourth volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which he aspires to read through in totality.
Miss Collins checks their bags and gives them their identification slips. She is distraught over their separation but realizes she is too old give the children the care they need. Though she, like William, is skeptical about Mr. Engersoll’s plan, she believes that if anyone can pull it off, the Pearce children can.
Chapter 3 Summary
The next morning at seven o’ clock, Mr. Engersoll and Miss Collins drive the children to St. Michael’s. Miss Collins bids them an emotional farewell. At the school, they meet the severe and hawkish Miss Carr, responsible for overseeing the evacuation. She immediately dislikes the children due to their special permission to stay together rather than be sorted by age like the other children. The teacher who checks them for nits before the journey, Mrs. Warren, is warm and welcoming to the children, taking pains to comfort them.
The three have a train car to themselves. Despite William’s warnings, Edmund, who gets motion sickness, sits in a backward facing seat. As the train moves north, Anna reads, William sleeps, and Edmund tries not to be sick. When the train stops two hours later so the evacuees can stretch their legs, Edmund must run off to be sick. He comes back with soiled sleeves and ripped pants. Miss Carr is furious, but Mrs. Warren covers for him.
Chapter 4 Summary
In midafternoon, the train arrives in the northern town that is to be their new home. The 70 to 80 evacuees enter the village hall, where Mrs. Norton, President of the WVS, welcomes the evacuees and the host families. Miss Carr orders the evacuees to line the perimeter of the hall so host families can peruse the group for children they want to foster.
Several people are interested in fostering Anna but do not want to take on the boys, while others say that three children are too many to take care of. A slight woman in a floral frock, along with her large, red-cheeked husband and similarly built twin sons, pauses when she sees Anna. She dims when Anna tells her that she will only be adopted alongside William and Edmund, but convinces her husband to foster all three, with Anna in their spare room and the boys on pallets in their twins’ room. The couple are Nellie and Peter Forrester. Their children are 12-year-old twins, Simon and Jack.
The children walk a mile with the Forresters to their comfortable Tudor-style house, which has a beautiful garden and lovely dinner smells inside—though Anna observes there is no bookcase. Mrs. Forrester takes Anna to her room while Mr. Forrester sets up pallets for the boys in Simon and Jack’s room. The twins read comics on their beds and do not acknowledge William or Edmund, who try to make conversation with them. Mr. Forrester is kind to the boys and shows them around the house’s downstairs.
During dinner, Mrs. Forrester reveals that their family gets to eat better meat rations than most because Mr. Forrester is the local butcher. They ask questions about the Pearce family, which William expertly answers according to Mr. Engersoll’s directions.
Jack says that he smells something sour and asks Edmund if it is him; Edmund is humiliated. William explains Edmund’s motion sickness. Mrs. Forrester and Mr. Forrester are kind to Edmund, but the twins ask to be excused, saying they are no longer hungry. Mrs. Forrester offers the children baths, washes their things, and tucks Anna into bed. In the twins’ room, William and Edmund go to sleep on the floor, though they hear one of the twins call them “filthy vackies” (56).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
These opening chapters establish the basic characterization of the Pearce children, the setting of the novel, and how that setting affects the main conflict.
The funeral in the first chapter takes place in June 1940, a pivotal time in the events of WWII. Poland had been invaded the year before by Germany (while Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union each carried out their own invasions and occupations), and Britain and France both went to war with the Axis. In May through June, the Nazis invaded and occupied northern France, leaving only the Straight of Dover between England and Nazi-occupied France. England ordered two evacuations of vulnerable citizens from its southern cities during these years in anticipation of aerial attacks; indeed, the Battle of Britain does begin a month later, in July 1940.
Each of the siblings fills their respective archetypal role of either eldest, middle, or youngest child, which establishes the framework of the theme The Meaning of Family. Each of these birth-order stereotypes are evident from the children’s behavior at their grandmother’s funeral in Chapter 1. Older children stereotypically “tend to take on more responsibility in the family and may be better at relating to adults” (Severson, Alexia. “Sibling stereotypes: Born first? Second? Third? Does it matter? Maybe.” Las Cruces Sun News. 1 May 2016). While Edmund and Anna make themselves sparse, William take responsibility of making “his way through the throng, thanking people for coming” (2). He interfaces with the adults to protect his siblings and spare them the responsibility: This will continue through the novel.
Edmund, the middle child, shoves cookie and iced buns into his pockets and spends the wake “taunting the vicar” (5). Stereotypically, middle children “suffer from being in that long shadow of the firstborn, which can lead to competitiveness and rebelliousness” (Severson). William is studious and responsible, so Edmund differentiates himself by being humorous, mischievous, and blunt to the point of rudeness, which often gets the three in trouble.
Youngest children stereotypically are babied, doted on, and humored. Anna, the youngest, spends the funeral under a settee with Mary Poppins, preferring “its company to that of the unfamiliar elderly ladies perched on the settee, or any of the other guests” (1-2). Confident that William will take on the responsibility of representing the siblings and interfacing with the adults, Anna pursues her own passions. While these stereotypical views of eldest, middle, and youngest children are flawed and not universal, and they are appropriately complicated as the novel goes on, in the opening chapters the children largely fill their stereotypical birth-order role.
The children rely on their familial bonds as the plot kicks off. The stress and chaos of the early 1940s presents both unique obstacles and opportunities to the Pearce children and their situation, which results in the book’s main conflict. Mr. Engersoll explains how the war makes their adoption less likely, saying “three is rather a lot to adopt, especially with the war going on. Families aren’t sure they can keep their own children safe, let alone take on more” (14). Adopting children is not a light undertaking. Potential parents are implicitly pledging to care for that child physically, mentally, and financially: paying for their schooling, clothes, food, and other goods until they reach adulthood. These expenditures are less tenable in wartime for a single child, let alone three. Thus, the children must cope with the threat of being separated from each other in order to find guardians who will take them in. Not only that, but the guardians they do find—the Forresters—are clearly unsatisfied with the situation. Mrs. Forrester convinces her husband to take the children only because Anna refuses to leave her brothers, and the Forrester twins immediately begin to bully the Pearce children as soon as they settle into the house. This establishes Tiers of Social Prejudice as a major theme.
Mr. Engersoll advises the children to blend in with the attendees of St. Michael’s and win over their billet. He paints this as an opportunity, and this suggestion launches the driving plot of the novel: The Pearces set out on their own to rural England with a mission to fulfill. In this way, the novel fulfills one of the classic tropes of children’s and young adult literature, wherein children are released from adult oversight and “the characters, unlike modern children, have the opportunity to roam free. This ‘exotic’ freedom empowers the protagonists – and by extension the reader” (Hall, Sarah. “Parental supervision not required: the freedom of classic children’s fiction.” The Guardian. 10 Jan 2012). Without reliable parental supervision, children in novels take on risks and actions they otherwise would not. A Place to Hang the Moon uses this trope to launch its main plot, while also making the resolution of it the children’s main goal.
Lastly, The Importance of Stories in Difficult Times is shown as the Pearce children leave their home. During the evacuation, each child is allowed to bring one book with them. The fact that this distresses them establishes a love of reading as a shared character trait amongst the siblings. The children carefully select books in which to take comfort on their journey, and their choices reflect their personalities. Anna reads Mary Poppins during the funeral and brings A Little Princess with her, showing her love of fictional stories that provide comfort or resonate with her in some way. Edmund’s choice of The Count of Monte Cristo shows a taste for excitement and adventure. Lastly, William is determined to read through the encyclopedia, which proves a studious, hardworking nature reflective of his responsible demeanor. While the bullying from the Forrester twins is the most obvious sign that the Pearces will not find a happily ever after in the Forrester household, the fact that the Forresters do not have a bookcase further emphasizes the families’ lack of compatibility.
