Notes

written by Colleen Brown ; illustrated by Emma Lay.
True A.N.Z.A.C. story of Violet's scarf
33 pages
colour illustrations.
Summary: This book is a simple tale of an eight-year-old school girl living on a farm on the outskirts of Riverton in 1915. Violet’s class was asked by a visiting Red Cross worker to contribute something for the soldiers serving overseas. Violet had one brother George who had already volunteered for WW1, and two more brothers were to follow in his footsteps. Over the course of the next month or so, Violet knitted a scarf for a NZ soldier. It was wrapped; her name went on a tag attached to the parcel; and along with thousands of other parcels, it was shipped to France. It took over a year to get there. Hundreds of parcels were loaded onto the back of a wagon and hauled by horses into a New Zealand Camp near the frontline in France. Two soldiers randomly threw parcels out to the eagerly awaiting men. Extraordinarily, Violet’s brother George caught her parcel as it flew past. George brought the scarf and the tag home. The tag is now in the Hocken Library in Dunedin.