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50 | “The doctor’s place was right in town, near the train station. On crutches I didn’t need a taxi, so we walked down the main street. I walked down the street, bad foot and all, and nobody stopped me.”

| During her first week of staying with Miss Smith, Ada and Jamie are taken to the doctor to ensure their health. This is also where Ada learns that clubfoot is treatable, and begins Ada’s questions of why her clubfoot was never fixed.

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34-35 | “The house looked asleep. It sat at the very end of a quiet dirt lane. Trees grew along both sides of the lane, and their tops met over it so that the lane was shadowed in green.”

Ada seemed curious about the untreated home where Miss Smith lived and took some time to observe it because she had never gotten the chance to see a home like that before.

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252 | “I went into the pub. It was full of soldiers and people from the village. If anyone noticed me, they didn’t care.“

This is an important scene where Ada grows, she describes it as her having a "Before Dunkirk" form of herself and a, "After Dunkirk" form.

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44 | “ The main room also had a back door. Outside was a little space fenced by a stone wall, and then another much bigger space, also fenced.”

After a few days in Miss Smith's house, Ada learns that she can venture outside and soon encounters Butter the pony. Ada immediately sets to work learning how to care for him and how to ride him. She also needed to learn how to handle Butters equipment, such as his saddle, reins, Butter’s food, and how to properly feed and exercise him. Ada loves Butter so much because he represents everything she was deprived of, her freedom, her independence, her dignity, and caring for Butter gives her all those things.

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296 | “The flat was two small rooms. We walked into a room with a table, a sink, a gas ring, and some chairs. A thin rug on a linoleum floor.”

Though Mam’s new flat is larger than old one, it still doesn’t compare to Miss Smith's house. The quote shows how Ada has grown comfortable with the quality of life in Susan’s house, and has come to see it at home. It shows that Ada has not grown ungrateful, but now she realizes that living with her mother isn’t fair on her and that a child needs more to truly survive.

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102 | “The trees opened up and in front of us was a huge stone building, big like I imagined the dock warehouses must be. Big like the London train station. It couldn’t be right. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t a house.”

This quote further illustrates to the reader about the extent of Ada’s knowledge of the world. Of course, living in the city means she is used to large buildings, yet she did not expect to see one in the green countryside. She also did not know that people live in such grand homes, since she was raised in a one room apartment and believes Miss Smith's cottage-like house to be excessive.

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151-152 | “I saw, stretched out in the distance, an endless carpet of blue and grey. Clouds floated over it, and small white things seemed to flicker on the surface… It made me feel lost and shivery...I pulled my gaze down from it and there was the village.”

As well as furthering the reader's understanding about how little Ada understands about the world after her isolation, the quote about the town being near the ocean also adds historical context. When Dunkirk occurs, the town receives many soldiers retreating across the channel, which reveals to be an important element of the plot. Also, being near the channel means that when Germany takes control of  more european countries, Ada and her brother Jamie may have to be evacuated again because of the villages close proximity to the channel.

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266-267 | “Across the living room, out the back door. Jamie ducked into the Anderson shelter and stuffed Bovril into his basket. The cat howled, he sounded like a baby screaming in pain. I stood at the door of the shelter, I’d never gone inside. I hated it, it scared me, it was so much like the cabinet under the sink at home.”

Even though it may have reminded Ada of the cabinet under the sink, it eventually strengthens her by getting used to what she thought was torture, this scene shows how Ada grows to be more comfortable with her surroundings.

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4 | “Our flat was one room on the third floor above the pub where mom worked nights.”

When the story begins we are introduced to Ada who lives in a very small, and filthy apartment. She lives there and needs to stay there since her mother is ashamed of her disability, Ada’s suffering is increased when she is forced under the sink for “making” Jamie steal a meat chop.

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4 | “...the iceman and his cart, the rag and bone man and his shaggy pony, the men coming home from the docks in the evenings, and the women hanging out wash and talking on the stoops.”

All Ada knows about the world, she sees and hears through the window. It is her only way to connect with other people and learn. Her daily view is very important to the story and is referenced throughout the book.