Carrie's War was published in 1973 and is a kind of coming-of-age story for a teenage girl growing up as an evacuee from London in South Wales. Inpsired by the author, Nina Bawden's real life experiences it has become a children's classic.

The book, although short generated many ideas and by the end of the project I knew the story and its characters inside out. It was the research really that generated the ideas – interviews with those who had been wartime children, museum experiences and steam train rides on the evacuee line to Wales brought me close to Carrie; her clothes are right, her hair, her shoes, and they wrap up the growing independence that I saw in her. The book cover needed to tell something of the story without giving it away - without repeating the written text - It took time and evaluation, but in due course, this illustration grew from all those previous ideas.

 

The skull is an intriguing element to the story but I didn't see it as THE story - which is about being a teenager, albeit during the war but it is a young person's story that translates across time, which is why is remains a classic.