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We Couldn't Leave Dinah

Mary Treadgold,

Stuart Tresilian (Illustrator)

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Feb 13, 2023 Manybooks rated it really liked it

Shelves: childrens-literature, horse-stories, war, book-reviews, national-socialism

Yes indeed, with Mary Treadgold's 1941 Carnegie Medal winning We Couldn't Leave Dinah we get a WWII themed pony story (and most definitely, an engaging and well written pony story with realistic characters and also nicely authentic feeling horse and pony scenarios) that is actually not historical fiction at all but should instead be considered as something entirely and convincingly, wonderfully contemporary (and with there naturally and of course also occurring some datedness and gender and soci Yes indeed, with Mary Treadgold's 1941 Carnegie Medal winning We Couldn't Leave Dinah we get a WWII themed pony story (and most definitely, an engaging and well written pony story with realistic characters and also nicely authentic feeling horse and pony scenarios) that is actually not historical fiction at all but should instead be considered as something entirely and convincingly, wonderfully contemporary (and with there naturally and of course also occurring some datedness and gender and social stratification in We Couldn't Leave Dinah, but which I as a reader am actually really quite majorly appreciative of since that very datedness gives a delightful and historically authentic textual picture of early 1940s England). And yes, Treadgold's featured narrative for We Couldn't Leave Dinah, it specifically takes place in the same year that We Couldn't Leave Dinah was in fact published (in 1941), and indeed, Mick and Caroline Templeton's story and the fears regarding a German, a Nazi invasion of the United Kingdom by way of the Channel Islands were in WWII Great Britain a totally legitimate threat (and thus in no way even remotely fantastical and as such totally historically accurate).

So basically, with We Couldn't Leave Dinah, Mary Treadgold has the Germans (the Nazis) invading the fictional Channel Island of Clerinel (and I do kind of wish that Treadgold had not used a fictional island but that perhaps using Jersey, Guernsey etc. might have been considered problematic, too realistic and perhaps even actually politically dangerous and imprudent) and that in the chaos of evacuating Clerinel, teenaged siblings Mick and Caroline Templeton are left behind and seek shelter with their beloved pony Dinah in their Pony Club headquarters (a hidden cave beneath some cliffs), as the Templeton home is being occupied by General Schleicher and his eight year old granddaughter Nannerl who also loves ponies and has her heart and her eyes set on Dinah, on Caroline's pony. But there are of course much bigger worries for Mick and Caroline in We Couldn't Leave Dinah than Nannerl desiring Dinah for her own, as the Nazis are obviously preparing to use Clerinel as the staging post for an invasion of Britain and that Mick must foil the plan, that he must infiltrate his former home to find out the date of the invasion.

And without giving away too many spoilers regarding We Couldn't Leave Dinah (except that Mick is able to discover the date of the invasion and that once the Templeton siblings finally are able to leave Clerinel they willingly leave Dinah in Nannerl Schleicher's care), what I as a person of German background find so refreshing and so wonderful (and in particular in a novel not only set in WWII England but also penned during WWII) is that while the German invaders are obviously depicted as the villains by the author, by Mary Treadgold, We Couldn't Leave Dinah also does not automatically render ALL Germans into automatic monsters (and that in fact, the only true monsters in We Couldn't Leave Dinah are the German government officials who are threatening Caroline and Mick's friend Peter Beaumarchais with having his German relatives sent to concentration camps if he and his father do not act as spies, and I am simply in awe that in 1941, Marty Treadgold knew and put onto paper the horrible truth of the fact that the Nazis were constantly monitoring their own people and that Germans with relatives abroad were in constant danger and also vive versa). A wonderful story is We Couldn't Leave Dinah, and with a happy enough ending that is still realistic since although Mary Treadgold has Mick and Caroline Templeton saving the day so to speak and letting the right people know the date of the proposed invasion of England by Germany, WWII is of course not over and everyone knows that as well (both the novel's characters and also of course the readers of We Couldn't Leave Dinah). ...more

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