French cartoonist Barroux combines his talent for interpretative illustration with the real-life mystery of an anonymous WWI French soldier's diary, which he rescued from routine rubbish collection on a twenty-first-century Paris street. Maintained between August 3, 1914, when he was mobilized, and September 12, 1914, where it abruptly ends, the diary records pithy, unsentimental notations of weather, troop movement, and the effects of the battle on both soldiers and civilians as well as the diarist's experiences seeing significant battle action, getting wounded and treated, and suffering from the boredom of waiting for word from both home and the front. For each scene the simple record evokes, Barroux depicts moving images in pencil-textured, deeply shaded, and unbounded panels, filling the backgrounds with simple, sketchy figures. With back matter briefly describing other remnants found with the diary, photos of its pages, and an introduction by War Horse (2007) author Michael Morpurgo, this creative repurposing of almost-lost primary source material is an excellent all-ages memorial, especially fitting for the war's centennial.

The hundred-year-old diary that forms the text of this work was found by French author-illustrator Barroux on a Paris sidewalk in a heap of trash. In entries rendered smoothly into English by Ardizzone, the anonymous author tells of his first months as an infantryman in WWI. Barroux (Mr. Leon-s Paris) quarters the pages, providing rough, black charcoal drawings for each sentence or two of text. He conveys the monotony and dread of the soldier-s life: the endless digging of trenches, the sight of wounded soldiers and fleeing families, the way dark and rain make everything worse. Only the clunky triangular noses and gentle features Barroux gives his human faces soften the grimness. Before long the narrator is wounded, and he describes his stay in the hospital, surrounded by suffering (-while a gunner who had been begging to die since the morning breathes his last-). The diary finishes abruptly: -Sometimes I-m sorry I didn-t stay in the line of fire.- The documentary-style pacing makes this account best suited to those with an established interest in accounts of military life, but it remains a remarkable artifact, given haunting new life. Ages 10-13. (July)-