14 year-old Ellen accepts her fate of looking after her younger brother, cooking for the family, etc. in an effort to help her family during World War II. She is growing up in Canada near an Air Base, but isn't one of the girls hanging out at the gates waiting to meet one of the "boys in blue" who are training to be pilots there. Her younger brother Colin can't seem to stay out of trouble, and it's his venture to the air base that causes a chance meeting for Ellen and a young airman named Stephen. This book sends you on a journey of many emotions, as Ellen has to eventually quit school to help with the war effort, and Stephen gets sent to England as a bomber pilot. The friendship and love between these two young remarkable people is heartwarming, and ends with a surprise I didn't predict. I will read it again.

This Canadian historical fiction is about the training camps for the RAF and the RCAF during World War II. Stephen is a young fighter pilot in training (part of the RAF). Ellen is a girl living in the town near the training camp. They become friends when Stephen returns Ellen's younger brother to her (he had been snooping around the base), and over the months they realize they love each other. Stephen eventually has to go back to England to fight, but they continue to write. Some of the plot is forced through the letters written home or to Ellen, and the characterization is a bit weak. But you can still connect with Stephen, Ellen, her friends, his friends, and their families. In some ways this was a typical war love story--it felt like an oral history as well. There were fun tidbits included, like the popularity of Jell-O and Brylcreem. Overall it was a pleasant, quick read about a subject that doesn't get covered often.

I am a fan of Gillian Chan's short stories for young adults. I basically devoured her two short story collections, Glory Days, and Golden Girl, so when I saw that she had written a novel, I picked it up.

From the very first page, I was swept into the story. My own beloved dog had died just a week before I read this novel, and so the character of Dog especially appealed to me. It is not easy to fully develop an animal character in a realistic novel, but Chan achieves this admirably. I had tears in my eyes as I read it. Dog was so "real" that I could almost pat him!

And the historical research! As a historical novelist myself, I am very picky when I read other historicals, but this one is spot-on. Bravo!

I also loved the touch of fantasy.

The Carved Box is a universal tale that transcends age limits.

If you liked Golden Girl, you'll love Glory Days! All the same characters, but new stories.

I like this book. Chan's style is clean and confident, and the cliches she employs are cliches precisely because they accurately reflect the reality of teen-age life. In the first story, "The Buddy System," the protagonist Dennis makes it clear what kind of book this is not: "In all those books they have in the library, the ones for 'young adults,' Buddy and I, the two misfits, would team up and through a series of moving adventures would become loved by one and all. Now you know and I know that's a load of crapola." He goes on to explain that because other kids have Buddy to pick on, they leave him, Denis, alone.

All the stories in this collection are told in the fist person, which gives them an immediacy and authenticity. Gillian Chan is a adult, but she captures the cynicism toward adults and the adult world that many teens feel. In the title story, Donna, the daughter of a factory worker, is painfully aware of the differences between her life-chances and those the her supposed best friend Anna, the 'Golden Girl,' whose father is the richest man in town. When Anna breezily refers to a local factory owner by his first name, Donna tells the reader that all she knew about the man is that she would "do just about anything not to end up working for him when I was out of school." Anna's obliviousness to class differences makes Donna's clear-sighted observations of them all the more poignant.

The adults in this book are not particularly competent or even likable. In "Elly, Nel and Eleanor," the father, instead of protecting his daughter from her neurotic mother, waltzes out on them both. In "Small-Town Napoleon," the protagonist's mother sympathizes with her son's desire to act in the school play, but is unable to effectively stand up for his right to do so, or to protect him from his father's foul temper. While a few of the teachers are portrayed as sympathetic (particularly to the 'good' students) others range from incompetent to malicious. In 'The Buddy System," Dennis tells us that one teacher, having contended for years with the Buddy's four older brothers, takes "a sick satisfaction in seeing Buddy suffer."

A strong feature of this book is the way characters pop up in more than one story. Bob, the villain of the first story, is also the sympathetically portrayed protagonist of the last one. This gives the book a depth that it would otherwise lack, and serves to remind young readers that there is such a thing as 'unreliable narration' (in life as well as art).

I would recommend this book to anyone who is, was, or is about to become, a teenager.

The teens in Golden Girl are not sweetness and light, and neither are the adults. The stories and the characters ring true. What I really like about this book is that all the stories stand alone, and yet they're linked. I read the whole thing in one sitting and all I could think was that I wanted more. So I got Glory Days, and it is just as good!