** Winner of The English Association 4-11 Book Awards - Key Stage 2 Non-Fiction **

Mick Manning's mother was a young woman in Wales at the outbreak of World War II. This fascinating book, a companion to the the very successful Tail-End Charlie about Mick's father's life in the RAF in World War II, tells her story using the same innovative non-fiction narrative style. At the outbreak of war and the start of food rationing, she left school aged 14 to work in a local greengrocer's shop. Later joining the WAAF (the Women's Auxiliary Air Force), she became a wireless operator and eventually a Y service listener for the secret signal decoding operation at Bletchley Park where the famous German Enigma Code was cracked. The book also looks at other essential women's roles during the war including the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), the Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service), Land Army, Fire Service etc, and a wide range of aspects of life affected by the war effort. Simply written and using speech bubbles and captioned illustration boxes of artefacts and documents from the period, this is a dramatic and engaging introduction to its subject.