Rations : A very Peculiar history: With no Added Butter by David Arscott

I picked this book from the Junior Section of the library because of its cover. It is a short account of Ration system in United Kingdom during the World War II. I read about fictional accounts of Ration during the War in many novels more recently in Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society about Rations and difficulty of finding proper food during German occupation in Guernsey and in The Child's Child about Rations in England. But both are fictional accounts.


This book is a non-fictional account about why Ration system was introduced during the War and what kind of goods were Rationed and what kind of goods were available plentiful. The book not only shows the hardships people faced during the War time but also provides interesting ways people found to make the best of what they had. With interesting war time recipes, cartoons and pictures this is both informative and interesting. It is interesting to learn that not only food, but also clothing and furniture were rationed. Each person was provided with some coupons, each item was assigned certain coupons and a person can buy whatever one needs with the coupons if one has the money to buy them, but were they enough to satisfy one's needs? The author gives a list of clothing with number of coupons required to purchase each and asks us if these would be enough to meet our needs, which does bring into understanding that how people went about with very little. Informative and interesting book!

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