Military & Wars Books - Page 3

Christmas in the Trenches

John McCutcheon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Winter Time... for Lloyd George...and Germany 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Author John McCutcheon does a generally fine job of balancing the private hope for peace with the public horror of war in this tale of the increasingly well-known Christmas truces of WWI. These holiday-inspired truces occurred in the "No Man's Land" between the two entrenched (literally) armies, and NcCutcheon backs his history-inspired fiction with a closing "Historical Note" and references to two books: "Silent Night," by S. Weintraub, and :Christmas Truce," by M. Brown and S. Seaton.

The violence, boredom, and sheer stupidity of this bloody war are only suggested to its intended early elementary school audience: A shadowy view of a man on a stretcher, cold, bored, sometimes sick soldiers. However, there is no denying that the book sanitizes WWI. At the conclusion, drawings of prone soldiers suggest being gunned down, but I doubt the young reader will make that interpretation.

Instead, this book is about peace breaking out--if only for a night, and Christmas Eve at that. The soldiers, separated by about maybe 100 yards, hear each other singing CHristmas songs, and the first move towards unity is a joint singing of "Silent Night." A bt later, a lone German soldier with a white flag bravely walks over the snow, and soon the trenches empty, gifts are exchanged, photos shared, and an impromptu soccer game is played on the former battlefield. That's where one can feel the impact of the book--in one transcendent night when soldiers recognized their shared humanity, the common feelings that lay deep within them.

Yes, I wanted the book to show the awful conditions in the trenches, to show even slightly more evidence of war's ravages, and to mention the who and why of the orders that placed them here. But, this is a book for young kids, and such "charged" issues would keep this book off at least some schools' library shelves and classrooms. I think though, that the afterward could have been broadened to include both the current explanation of the truces, and a brief, age-appropriate presentation of the war's causes and effects.

THe oil illustrations are outstanding. Henri Sorenson had to show the murky trenches and dark evening hours, but the pictures are clear, nicely illuminated, and focus on the combatants' faces. Whether he intended it or not, the last scene of the weary soldiers back in the trench after the truce clevrly hints at the tremendous human toll.

There is an accompanying CD featuring McCutcheon's cloying reading of his story, which tilts the tone strongly back towards the "saccharine" and "sanitized" side. It all sounds so wondrous and almost appealing that it feels unjust. He should have stuck with the three songs nicely performed on the CD: "Silent Night" in German and English, McCutcheon's recapitulation of the story "Christmas in the Trenches," which actualy, finally, sneaks in some anti-war sentiment (for example, "...Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"), and Track 4, which, strangely enough, is the same narration of the story heard at the beginning of the CD.

Editorial Review:

Nominated for a GRAMMY Award in the Best Spoken Word Album for Children category!

Sunrise Over Fallujah

Walter Dean Myers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But the young men and women in the military's Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for it: WAR.

In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers looks at a contemporary war with the same power and searing insight he brought to the Vietnam war of his classic, FALLEN ANGELS. He creates memorable characters like the book's narrator, Birdy, a young recruit from Harlem who's questioning why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman who just wants to make it back to Georgia and open a club;

and a whole unit of other young men and women and drops them incountry in Iraq, where they are supposed to help secure and stabilize Iraq and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. The young civil affairs soldiers soon find their definition of "winning" ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like "survival" and "despair."

Caught in the crossfire, Myers' richly rendered characters are just beginning to understand the meaning of war in this powerful, realistic novel of our times.

The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection)

Padraic Colum

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Homer for Children Today! 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Ho hum--I will never get my 5th grader to read this tome--however moving the story line and imagery. It is too thick to easily add to a history block of Ancient Civilizations around the world. The language is too dated. The narrations dwarfs the action. The standard, for good youth literature today, requires writers to SHOW the meaning and NOT TELL IT.
Thankfully, author Geraldine McCaughrean wrote a wonderfully telling of GILGAMESH, so I turned around and ordered her retelling of Homer's THE ILLIAD and THE ODYSSEY which is titled, ODYSSEUS.

Does anyone want my copy of Padric's version. The cover art is great.

Wonderfully retold story of Odysseus 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read this book to my 7 year old, homeschooled daughter. Her children's choir is singing the story of Odysseus and this book brought the songs to life for her. She never wanted me to put it down. The language is sophisticated but she could follow the story and was entranced by it.

Editorial Review:

Thee story of the travels and adventures of Odysseus, told in a way that will spark any child's imagination and will help to plant the seed of literary curiosity that will bloom in his or her later years. Two 90-minute cassettes and two 60's.

Pink and Say

Patricia Polacco

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A better way to teach the consequences of war and hate! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I have read this book to 4th-8th graders for years now, and find it stirs deep emotions of compassion in the young and old alike.
A must to teach the unintended consequences of war and hate.
Unforgettable!
In Harmony,
Diane L. Donohue

Pink and Say 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderfully written book. I have always enjoyed Patricia Polacco books and the sneak peek into her life that she gives us. As a second grade teacher I will use this book next year to give my students a better understanding of what happened in our country not so long ago. This book should give them a better understanding of how the color of your skin affected how others treated you.

Moving 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

For a Civil War unit, this picture book has mature pictures, which are beautiful. A black teen Union soldier saves a white soldier, they hide, then are found and taken away. The Confederates hanged Pinkus (the Black teen) and imprisoned the White teen. The White teen survived, and the book is a true story passed down through oral history of his family. A teacher may want to use this powerful and moving story for any age students.

Editorial Review:

In a true story, Pinkus Aylee, a black Union soldier, finds Sheldon Curtis left for dead and carries him home to be tended by his mother, but when the two boys attempt to rejoin the Union troops, they are captured and sent to Andersonville Prison.

How I Live Now

Meg Rosoff

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Compulsive Reader's Reviews 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Shipped off to England from her Manhattan home by her father and his brand new wife, who is most certainly the spawn of the devil, Daisy isn't sure what to expect of her aunt and cousins, with whom she'll be staying with indefinitely. She is surprised to find that her cousins Osbert, Isaac, Edmond and Piper live a mostly independent life while her aunt works long hours, and feels a special connection with her Edmond, who is her own age.

But then the war comes, and Daisy's aunt is stuck in another town, far away from them. They must learn to survive on their own. It all seems surreal as they live nestled in the country, away from rules or adults or expectations. Daisy and Edmond fall in love, despite what others may think. But it is all destroyed when the soldiers come. Daisy and Piper are sent away, and the cousins' separation is almost more than anyone can bear. Although torn apart, they must find away to come together.

How I Live Now is a remarkable novel of survival, loss, pain, love and hope. The story is told from Daisy's sharp and sarcastic perspective ("I don't get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say," she says on page seventy-seven), and as her narrative progresses we come to find that although strong in her own way, she also has a vulnerable side. The book takes a momentary foray towards more spiritual ground when Daisy insists that she can communicate with Edmond at certain times even though they are miles apart. But besides that, the book is full of thought provoking ponderings, human observations, and musings on true love that will leave the reader with much to think about. The story focuses less on the actual war that is being waged around characters, and more on their individual struggles for survival, which give it a more philosophical air that is intriguing, but some readers may feel the urge to know more about the politics of the unknown war. How I Live Now, while heart breaking, through its strange style, conveys a sense hope and unconditional faith, and is a powerful reminder of the strength of love.

Editorial Review:

It would be much easier to tell this story if it were all about a chaste and perfect love between Two Children Against the World at an Extreme Time in History. But let's face it, that would be crap. Daisy is sent from New York to England to spend a summer with cousins she has never met. They are Isaac, Edmond, Osbert and Piper. And two dogs and a goat. She's never met anyone quite like them before - and, as a dreamy English summer progresses, Daisy finds herself caught in a timeless bubble. It seems like the perfect summer. But their lives are about to explode. Falling in love is just the start of it. War breaks out - a war none of them understands, or really cares about, until it lands on their doorstep. The family is separated. The perfect summer is blown apart. Daisy's life is changed forever - and the world is too.

Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two

Joseph Bruchac

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Terrific book 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Bruchac has created a terrific historic novel that has enough action for young male adults and enough history and research to appeal to an adult audience. Bruchac does a wonderful job of giving a sense of the complexities of growing up on a Navajo reservation in the first half of the book. The irony of a nation trying to wipe out the Navajo language but using it as a crucial means of communication during 20th century wars should not be lost on the reader while reading the second half of the book. Bruchac's narrator tells this tale in an even-keeled, even-tempered manner. The reader is allowed to gain his own sense of injustice our nation has inflicted upon its Native American population. Bruchac's description of the progression of America's involvement in World War II's Pacific campaign is well laid-out and dramatically presented. Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

The United States is at war, and sixteen-year-old Ned Begay wants to join the cause—especially when he hears that Navajos are being specifically recruited by the Marine Corps. So he claims he’s old enough to enlist, breezes his way through boot camp, and suddenly finds himself involved in a top-secret task, one that’s exclusively performed by Navajos. He has become a code talker. Now Ned must brave some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with his native Navajo language as code, send crucial messages back and forth to aid in the conflict against Japan. His experiences in the Pacific—from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima and beyond—will leave him forever changed.

On the Beach

Nevil Shute

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 206 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Bleak, gloomy...the end of the world if we're not careful 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The transition from night to day begins each morning with a gentle sunrise insidiously piercing through the unwilling blanket of darkness. Eventually the colossal battle becomes fruitless and night gives in to the increasingly unrelenting pressure of sunshine. In relatively little time the seemingly insignificant temperature rise becomes substantial, creeping its way into life, permeating throughout all that doesn't wilt before the sun's potency. The changes are both irrevocable an inevitable.

The atrocities and horrors of war, specifically the aftermath, are just as apparent as that sunrise. Similarly, the nuclear fallout and resulting widespread death is agonizingly slow.

On the Beach is a tale of the realistic horror that could eventually destroy our planet. For those near the epicenters of full scale nuclear war, death is painless and instant. Those not fortunate enough to suffer a sweet, immediate death, face the realization that death approaches at a snail's pace. As the poison of radiation drifts across the ocean southward towards Australia, a U.S. submarine commander named Dwight Towers has to carry on with his mission, and make sense of the world's military actions.

Dwight meets Moira Davidson, a frisky Australian girl with a wild streak, and along with their married friends Peter and Mary, they go about the gut-wrenching final days of their lives. Dwight holds on to the memory of his life, seeking solace in moderate denial, buying gifts for his wife and children who have no doubt already succumbed to the poisonous radiation. Similarly, Peter and Mary plan a garden for future seasons they will never see. Meanwhile, Moira faces death with a slight chip on her shoulder, and a scowl at what could have been. Eventually the four find a dichotomous comfort in knowing that they have no recourse for survival, living their final days with as much vigor, generosity, and soft smiles as possible.

The real strength of this novel is the character development. By learning about the characters' lives and insecurities, strengths and flaws, as well as their likes and dislikes, a great deal of empathy is elicited. Following their depressingly mundane last days during humanity's failing health and infrastructure sheds light on that which we all take for granted, like the simple pleasures and beauty that can be gained from a good drink, an exhilarating race, or a relaxing day fishing.

Humanity should hope that nothing remotely similar to this novel actually occurs. And, even though I'm sure there would be considerably more chaos than represented in the characters' dignified approach, the slow, somber story development accentuates the truly dreary prospect of a slow helpless death.

Editorial Review:

"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off."
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end....

Good Night, Mr Tom

Michelle Magorian

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 120 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

powerful story about family 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Timid, scrawny, Willie Beech is the abused child of a single mother. She sends him to Mr. Tom, who lives in the English countryside, because London is being bombed by the Nazis.

The two main adults in this story, the mother and Mr. Tom, seem very similar in the beginning. Yet, by the end, we see that they are completely different. What really hit home was this: hard times can make hard people, but one's true colors shine through when faced with others in need.

Mr. Tom's gruff exterior is only his exterior. He's really got a warm heart, which he opens up to Willie and shows him the love that's supposed to be in a family.

The mother's quiet, strict exterior masks her bitter, mean nature. She has no love for her children, and abuses them in subtle, neglectful ways.

We don't actually see the abuse, we see the end result...which, in my opinion, is far more powerful. I cried for Willie at the end of this book, and cheered Mr. Tom for doing everything he could to save this poor boy. When children are old enough to understand the results of abuse, every family should read this book.

Editorial Review:

A battered child learns to embrace life when he is adopted by an old man in the English countryside during the Second World War.

The Good Fight : How World War II Was Won

Stephen E. Ambrose

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Stephen E. Ambrose, one of the finest historians of our time, has written an extraordinary chronicle of World War II for young readers. From Japanese warplanes soaring over Pearl Harbor, dropping devastation from the sky, to the against-all-odds Allied victory at Midway, to the Battle of the Bulge during one of the coldest winters in Europe's modern history, to the tormenting decision to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima with atomic weapons, The Good Fight brings the most horrific -- and most heroic -- war in history to a new generation in a way that's never been done before.

In addition to Ambrose's accounts of major events during the war, personal anecdotes from the soldiers who were fighting on the battlefields, manning the planes, commanding the ships -- stories of human triumph and tragedy -- bring the war vividly to life.

Highlighting Ambrose's narrative are spectacular color and black-and-white photos, and key campaign and battlefield maps. Stephen E. Ambrose's singular ability to take complex and multifaceted information and get right to its essence makes The Good Fight the book on World War II for kids.

America's White Table

Margot Theis Raven, Mike Benny

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Illustrated by Mike Benny

The White Table is set in many mess halls as a symbol for and remembrance to service members fallen, missing, or held captive in the line of duty. Solitary and solemn, it is the table where no one will ever sit.

As a special gift to her Uncle John, Katie and her sisters are asked to help set the white table for dinner. As their mother explains the significance of each item placed on the table Katie comes to understand and appreciate the depth of sacrifice that her uncle, and each member of the Armed Forces and their families, may be called to give.

It was just a little white table...
but it felt as big as America when we helped Mama put each item on it and she told us why it was so important.

"We use a Small Table, girls," she explained first, "to show one soldier's lonely battle against many. We cover it with a White Cloth to honor a soldier's pure heart when he answers his country's call to duty."

"We place a Lemon Slice and Grains of Salt on a plate to show a captive soldier's bitter fate and the tears of families waiting for loved ones to return," she continued.

"We push an Empty Chair to the table for the missing soldiers who are not here..."

Margot Theis Raven has been a professional writer working in the fields of radio, television, magazines, newspapers, and children's books for 30 years. Margot's first children's book, Angels in the Dust, won five national awards, including an IRATeacher's Choice Award. Her first book with Sleeping Bear Press, Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot, was the runner-up for the 2004 Texas Bluebonnet Award. She lives with her family in Charleston, South Carolina.

Mike Benny's illustrations have appeared in Time, GQ, New Yorker and Sports Illustrated Magazines. He has also been awarded two Gold Medals from the Society of Illustrators. This is Mike's first children's book. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Mary Ann and daughter Adele.