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Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis

Feb18

Life is just one d— thing after another. ~Elbert Hubbard

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. ~John Lennon

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? ~Robert Penn Warren

Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians. ~Franklin P. Jones

Connie Willis writes some of the best books about time travel and history and epistemology and philosophy that I have ever had the privilege of reading. I first read her novel The Doomsday Book, about time-traveling historians from the future, in 2009. In that book Kivrin, a history student at Oxford in 2048, travels through “the net” back in time to the fourteenth century. After I finished The Doomsday Book, I immediately went out and found a copy of Ms. Willis’s next time travel history book, To Say Nothing of the Dog. It’s a delightful romp in which the fate of the universe may or may not be at stake. However, the course of history and the universe is “self-correcting,” shades of LOST, so the universe is never really in danger of imploding or careening off-track. Probably. I loved it even more than The Doomsday Book.

Now, in 2010, Ms. Willis has published two more future-historians-travel-through-time books: Blackout and All Clear. In these some of the same characters reappear, and the universe or the space-time continuum IS in danger of going off the rails. The focal point of all the temporal disturbance and crisis is World War II, and of course, several of our intrepid historians are criss-crossing Britain through time and space, trying to avoid the temptation to interfere in history and do something that, however well-meaning, might actually change the course of the war and end up making Hitler and the Nazis the victors. It’s not easy to observe history without changing it, however, as Polly and Mike and Eileen find out. It’s also not easy to survive the Blitz in London, even if you know about when and where the bombs are going to drop. Nor is Dunkirk a safe vantage point from which to observe heroism, even though there’s a lot of it going on.

I have several things to say about these two novels. First of all, they’re not really two novels; it’s one novel in two volumes, just as The Lord of the Rings is one book in three parts. So be sure to have the second book, All Clear, on hand before you start the first one. And read them in order even though there’s lots of time travel involved so that events in the novel(s) don’t exactly appear in chronological order.

Second, read these books. If you liked LOST because of the mind-bending time travel and suspenseful and philosophical elements, you should like what Connie Willis has done with these two books. If you’re a WW II buff, you will find these books fascinating. If you just enjoy a good science fiction or historical fiction story, read Blackout and All Clear. And read all the way to the end. It’s worth the confusion that accompanies the 1000+ pages of the two books. (Time travel makes my head hurt—in a good way.)

William Holman Hunt: The Light of the Worldphoto © 2007 freeparking | more info (via: Wylio)
Finally, I think these are what I would call Christian worldview novels. It’s not blatant or didactic or obvious, but if Ms. Willis is not a Christian, she has certainly co-opted Christian values and symbols and made the books breathe a Christian ethos in a way that is both attractive and entertaining. The central images and metaphors of the novels are Christian: The Light of the World, a painting by Holman Hunt, St. Paul’s Cathedral standing above bombed-out London, The Tempest by Shakespeare, a door that opens to another world. The themes are all about redemption and sacrifice and the power of obedience to what is good and noble even when you don’t know what the outcome will be. And this conversation, between a time traveler from the future and an elderly Shakespearean actor caught in the darkest days of WW II, toward the end of the second volume, clinches it for me:

“Was that your third question?” she managed to ask.
“No, Polly,” he said. “Something of more import.” And she knew it must be. . . .
“What is it?” she asked. . . .
He stepped forward and grasped the staircase’s railing, looked up at her earnestly. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?”
He doesn’t mean the war, she thought. He’s talking about all of it–our lives and history and Shakespeare. And the continuum.
She smiled down at him. “A comedy, my lord.”

Surely, Christians are the ones who believe that life and history are ultimately a comedy that ends in the Great Marriage Feast.

I loved these books.

Guide to the Oxford Time Travel books at The Connie Willis.net Blog.

Content consideration: These novels are adult novels, not for children, and the characters sometimes use bad language. The character Mike, in particular, does take the Lord’s name in vain on numerous occasions.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Feb14

Amazing story. If it weren’t so heavily footnoted and corroborated, I would find it difficult to believe such a miraculous survival story. Louis Zamperini, the subject of this riveting biography, was an Olympic runner. He won a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and he planned to compete in the 1940 Olympics. Louie, as he was called, was getting close to breaking the four minute mile, but World War II derailed Louis’s Olympic and world record hopes. However, the rest of the story which chronicles Louie’s experiences during and after World War II is even more astounding and transcendent than any world record in a sporting event. I don’t think I’ve ever read about anyone who survived the multiple ordeals that Zamperini was able to live through and then also managed, by the grace of God, to live a full and joyful life afterwards.

One of my urchins says she doesn’t believe in miracles. I think she’s saying she’s never heard a Voice from on high or seen a person instantly healed or witnessed the sudden appearance of manna from heaven. However, if what happened in the life of Louis Zamperini wasn’t a series of miracles, I don’t know what to call it. First of all, Louis and the pilot of his B-24 bomber survive a crash in the Pacific and forty plus days on a raft without supplies in the ocean. And it only get worse when the two Americans land on the Marshall Islands and are “rescued” by the Japanese army.

But the greatest miracle of all comes after the war is over for everyone else, when Louie is still trapped in the prison of his own mind.

No one could reach Louie, because he had never really come home. In prison camp, he’d been beaten into dehumanized obedience to a world order in which the Bird (a cruel Japanese prison guard) was absolute sovereign, and it was under this world order that he still lived. The Bird had taken his dignity and left him feeling humiliated, ashamed, and powerless, and Louie believed that only the Bird could restore him, by suffering and dying in the grip of his hands. A once singularly hopeful man now believed that his only hope lay in murder.
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird’s death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.

This book actually brought me to tears, something that seldom happens to me while reading. I was reminded that as Corrie Ten Boom often said, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

I was also reminded of my conviction that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary evils. The Japanese were not planning to ever surrender to the Allies. In the book, Hillenbrand tells how the POWs in Japan saw women and children being trained to defend the homeland to the last person. And the Japanese had a “kill-all policy” which ordered prison camp commanders to kill all the prisoners of war if it ever became evident that they might be rescued and repatriated. This policy was carried out in several Japanese prison camps, and “virtually every POW believed that the destruction of this city (Hiroshima) had saved them from execution.”

Man’s inhumanity to man continues on into this century, but if we are to avoid and prevent future horrors, we must remember the past. And we must be presented with stories that affirm the possibility of redemption, even from the darkest of atrocities.

The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson

Oct12

true-blue, in a dither, mind your own beeswax, old battle-ax, can it, the hoosegow, a good egg, bushed, conniption fit, scuttlebutt, shut-eye, cock-eyed, tough cookie, chitchat, discombobulated, peaked, dreamboat, triple whammy, in a funk, hit the jackpot, jazzed, kitty-corner, don’t take any wooden nickels.

Reading Kirby Larson’s entry into the Dear America series, set in 1941-42, was like revisiting my childhood. Not that I was alive during World War II. But the slang terms and the idioms above that I took from The Fences Between Us were words and phrases that I heard my mother and father use as I was growing up. And they were children during World War II. The language Ms. Larson used in her pretend diary of a 13 year old girl growing up in Seattle was perfect, not overdone as I’ve read in some books that attempt to portray a certain time period, but just enough to make it feel real.

Then, too, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church where we read and studied about “home missionaries” who worked with ethnic churches, and I knew that Ms. Larson’s story of a Caucasian pastor of a Japanese Baptist Church and his daughter, Piper the sometimes reluctant PK, was something that really could have happened. In fact, the afterword to the book says that the story is based on the WW2 experiences of Pastor Emory “Andy” Andrews who “moved from Seattle to Twin Falls, Idaho to be near his congregation, all of whom had been incarcerated in Minidoka“, a Japanese internment camp.

Like all of the books in the Dear America series, the story is written in the form of a diary. Piper’s diary is a gift from one of the members of her church, grandmotherly Mrs Harada, who’s trying to make Piper feel a little better about her brother Hank’s enlistment in the U.S. Navy. Hank enlists in what he thinks is a “peacetime Navy” in November 1941, and he’s soon shipped to Hawaii, a seeming plum of an assignment. December 7, a day that will live in infamy, changes everything for Hank, for Piper, for Piper’s sister Margie, for Piper’s pastor dad, and especially for the members of the Seattle Japanese Baptist Church.

The book isn’t all history. Piper experiences her first romance, and she tries to work out her own feelings about being patriotic while at the same time supporting her friends who are Japanese American and being persecuted and mistreated for no good reason. There are other books for young people about the same time period and about the Japanese “relocation camps”, but I thought this one was a good addition to the category.

Other children’s books about the Japanese American experience during World War II:
Picture Books
Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki.
The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida.
So Far From the Sea by Eve Bunting.
Flowers from Mariko by Rick Noguchi and Deneen Jenks.
Fiction
Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata.
Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salibury.
The Moon Bridge by Marcia Savin.
Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida.
Nonfiction
Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jean Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston.
The Children of Topaz: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Camp by Michael Tunnell and George Chilcoat.
The Invisible Thread: An Autobiography by Yoshiko Uchida.

The Fences Between Us has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the category of Middle Grade Fiction.

Texas Tuesday: Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Jan26

What an inspiring and absorbing book! Ms. Smith writes about Ida Mae Jones, a self-identified “colored girl” who is light-skinned enough to pass for white. The book begins in late 1941, and of course, that means Pearl Harbor, and World War II. Ida Mae learned to fly airplanes from her daddy, who was a crop duster. So when she hears that the U.S. Army has formed a group called the WASPs, Women Airforce Service Pilots, Ida Mae Jones is determined to sign up, even though she lives in Louisiana and the training is to take place in Sweetwater, Texas, two places where the very idea of a young black woman serving alongside white women is sure to be anathema. So in order to get into the WASP’s, Ida Mae basically pretends to be white.

A lot of the book is about the training and the dangers these pioneering women pilots faced as they bravely gave themselves and their abilities to the war effort. I don’t know much about flying airplanes, so although I thought the parts of the book that described the training and the women’s heroics were wonderfully written, I don’t know how accurate they were. I assume Ms. Smith did her research since the book Flygirl started out as a master’s thesis.

Another aspect of the book is the discussion and treatment of race and skin color. I thought this was fascinating, especially in light of recent discussions in the kidlitosphere. What does it mean to be black or to be a person of color? How do POC themselves see the variations in skin color? Is it wrong to pretend to be white and leave your darker-skinned family and friends behind? Even for a good cause?

One of the scenes in the book reminded me of Esther in particular. Ida Mae, like Esther has hidden her heritage and her connection with her people, but she is asked by her mother to go to the military authorities and ask for help in finding her brother who is MIA. Ida Mae knows that if she asks about her brother, she may be discovered and sent home. Her story doesn’t exactly parallel Esther’s, but it is similar. And Ida Mae shows similar courage.

All the issues, discrimination against women and against people of color, the varied reasons that people have for volunteering to fight in a war, misunderstandings and rifts between family members and friends, the cost of following one’s dreams, are explored with both sensitivity and humor. I would recommend this book to all young women who are in the middle of deciding who they are and what they want to be. And as an older woman, I enjoyed reading about Ida Mae Jones and her adventures. I wanted her to be able to “have it all,” even as I knew that the time and place where the story was set wouldn’t allow for a completely happy ending.

Reading in Color: “Flygirl made me want to go out and learn how to fly an airplane (or at least fly in one so that I can sit in the front and observe the pilot). The way the characters describe their love of flying makes you want to try it.”

One Librarian’s Book Reviews: “The setting is absolutely perfect, with the details from the time period completely enhancing the whole feel of the book. I absolutely felt like every part of it seemed like it could be true.”

Liz at the YALSA blog: Flygirl examines universal questions of identity, family, and growing up, with flying being both what Ida Mae wants to do, as well as working as a metaphor for a young woman trying to escape the limitations her country places on her because of her race and her sex.

Interview with Sherri L. Smith at the YaYaYa’s

Do You Know What Today Is?

Dec7

Every year on this date, my mom would ask me, “Do you know what today is?”

“Christmas? Almost Christmas? The beginning of Christmas?”



I eventually learned that December 7th has nothing to do with Christmas. Go here for an article by Maggie Hogan on commemorating this “date which will live in infamy” in your homeschool.

The book Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows, Hawaii, 1941 by Barry Denenberg is one of the Dear America series from Scholastic. Go here for more information on the book and some activities to accompany it.

Other books for children and young adults:
Air Raid–Pearl Harbor!: The Story of December 7, 1941 by Theodore Taylor.

A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor by Harry Mazer. Interview at Cynsations with author Harry Mazer.

Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salibury. A Japanese-American boy in Hawaii, Eddy Okubo, experiences the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, lies about his age, and joins the Army. Because of his ethnic background, Eddy is given a special assignment that tests his commitment, patriotism, and endurance.

World War II for Kids: A History with 21 Activities by Richard Panchyk.

Clouds Over Mountains by Matt Joseph. Reviewed by The Sleepy Reader.

Naval History and Heritage Command website on the story of Pearl Harbor.

Christmas in North Platte, Nebraska, 1941

Dec7

“The whole effort started by mistake. Several days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, people in North Platte, Nebraska heard that their own Company D of the Nebraska National Guard would be passing through town on its way from an Arkansas training camp to the West Coast. A crowd gathered at the Union Pacific train station to greet the boys with cookies, candy, and small gifts. When the train arrived, it turned out it was transporting a Company D from Kansas, not Nebraska. After a moment of disappointment, someone in the crowd asked, ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ And they began handing their gifts to the war-bound soldiers.
The next day Miss Rae Wilson wrote the North Platte Daily Bulletin to suggest that the town open a canteen to greet all troop trains stopping there. ‘Let’s do something and do it in a hurry!’ she wrote.
Beginning on Christmas Day 1941 and continuing through World War II, the town offered itself as the North Platte Canteen. For 365 days a year volunteers from the remote community of 12,000 and surrounding hamlets provided hot coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches, and encouragement for young soldiers passing through. Hundreds of families, churches, schools, businesses, and clubs pitched in to help raise money, buy supplies, and make food. They greeted every soldier on every train with gifts and good wishes. By April 1, 194 its last day, the North Platte Canteen had served more than 6 million GI’s.”
Taken from The American Patriot’s Almanac, compiled by William J. Bennett and John T.E. Cribb. Semicolon review here.

What small act of kindness or charity is God asking you to do today? Do it. Don’t delay or find excuses; just do it. Who knows how God may multiply your small effort?

The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico

Jul21

I’ve seen two movies based on books written by Paul Gallico: Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris starring Angela Lansbury, Omar Sharif and Diana Rigg and the blockbuster 1972 movie The Poseidon Adventure starring Shelley Winters, Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Stella Stevens, Carol Lynley, Ernest Borgnine, and Jack Albertson. However, I’ve never read anything by Mr. Gallico until now.

Paul Gallico was a movie critic, then a very successful sports writer, but he wanted to write fiction. He wrote short stories for various magazines, got a $5000 check for one story, and promptly retired from sports-writing to write fiction. His first and most successful novel(?) was The Snow Goose. Not really a novel or even a novella, the book clocks in at 58 small, widely spaced pages, and I would call it a short story. It was first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1940, and The Snow Goose was one of the O. Henry prize winners in 1941.

The story itself is set on the Essex coast of England, beginning in “the late spring of 1930” and ending approximately ten years later. The main action of the story takes place in and around the evacuation of Dunkirk by the British near the beginning of World War II. It’s a romantic, and sad story about an artist, his young friend and protege, and a Canada snow goose that makes its way somehow to the Essex coast and becomes a symbol of hope for survivors of the debacle and rescue that was Dunkirk.

I would think that as a gentle introduction to World War II literature, The Snow Goose would be a winner among high school students. Other books and movies featuring the evacuation of Dunkirk:

Books:
The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord. Nonfiction.

Dunkirk: The Complete Story of the First Step in the Defeat of Hitler by Norman Gelb. More nonfiction.

Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind by Sean Longden. Times Online review/

On Rough Seas by Nancy L. Hull. Young adult fiction. Fourteen year old Alex lives in Dover, England in 1939, and he is eventually a hero as he participates in the rescue of the British soldiers at Dunkirk.

The Little Ships: the heroic rescue at Dunkirk in World War II by Louise Borden. Picture book. “A young English girl and her father take their sturdy fishing boat and join the scores of other civilian vessels crossing the English Channel in a daring attempt to rescue Allied and British troops trapped by Nazi soldiers at Dunkirk.”

Dunkirk Crescendo by Brock and Bodie Thoene. Rather melodramatic, fast-paced Christian fiction by a pair of prolific writers in the genre of historical fiction. This book is Book #9 of the Zion Covenant series published by Tyndale House.

Atonement by Ian McEwan features Dunkirk in the second half of the story. Semicolon review here.

Movies:
Dunkirk (1958) “Documentary-style film which tells two sides of the evacuation of more than 350,000 troops from Dunkirk beaches in 1940. A British corporal (John Mills) finds himself responsible for getting his men back to Britain from the Dunkirk beaches, after their officer is killed and they are separated from the main allied forces. Meanwhile, a civilian reporter (Bernard Lee) follows the build-up to the eventual evacuation of British and French troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.”

Mrs. Miniver (1942) “Mrs. Miniver nobly tends her rose garden while her stalwart husband participates in the evacuation at Dunkirk. She personifies grace under pressure as the Miniver family huddles in their bomb shelter during a Luftwaffe attack, while she is forced to confront a downed Nazi paratrooper in her kitchen, and while she is preparing for her annual flower show despite the exigencies of bombing raids.” I saw Mrs. Miniver about a year ago, and I thought it was delightful. If you like The Snow Goose and its somewhat sentimental picture of a world at war, you’ll enjoy Mrs. Miniver, too.

The Snow Goose itself was made into a 1971 film starring Richard Harris and Jenny Agutter. I’ve not seen the movie; have any of you?

Nicely maintained website for fans of Paul Gallico and his books.

Hymn #100: O God Our Help In Ages Past

Jun2

Lyrics: Isaac Watts, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, 1719.
Music: ST ANNE by WIlliam Croft, 1708.
Theme: Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Psalm 90:1-2

Hannah: . . . a beautiful commentary of the frailty of human life, and the omnipotent strength of an immortal God. This is a beautiful cry to God for help in our brief lives, and a remembrance that He is our home in the next one.


O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
Return, ye sons of men:
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

From The Second World War by Winston Churchill, Vol. 3, p. 345:

On Sunday morning, August 10, (l94l) Mr Roosevelt came aboard H.M.S. PRINCE OF WALES and, with his Staff officers and several hundred representatives of all ranks of the United States Navy and Marines, attended Divine Service on the quarterdeck. This service was felt by all of us to be a deeply moving expression of the unity of faith of our two peoples, and none who took part in it will forget the spectacle presented that sunlit morning on the crowded quarterdeck…… the American and British chaplains sharing in the reading of the prayers.. I chose the hymns myself.

We ended with “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” which Macaulay reminds us the Ironsides had chanted as they bore John Hampden’s body to the grave. Every word seemed to stir the heart. It was a great hour to live. Nearly half those who sang were soon to die.”

This hymn is inextricably linked, in my mind at least, with Churchill and with the heroism of the British people during World War II. In the final scenes of the WWII film Mrs. Miniver, as the people gather in a bomb-damaged church, the preacher exhorts them on remaining steadfast and faithful as the ST ANNE tune to O God Our Help in Ages Past plays in the background. According to Cyber Hymnal, the same hymn was played at Sir WInston Churchill’s funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London in 1965.

I know of two alternate tunes to this venerable hymn:

Sovereign Grace has a mp3 version that you can download for free if you like it.
My friend Hannah also has composed a tune setting for the lyrics to O God Our Help in Ages Past, and we sing her tune at my church. I wish you could hear it; she’s quite a talented composer.

I also found at iTunes a ST ANNE rendition by Bing Crosby, and I just had to buy it. I’m rather fond of Mr. Crosby’s crooning.

Sources:
Hymn History: O God Our Help in Ages Past.
Cyber Hymnal: O God Our Help in Ages Past.
W. G. Parker: An Historical Link With 1941 World War II.

Children’s Fiction of 2008: Jimmy’s Stars by Mary Ann Rodman

Nov12

This book was another historical fiction title that started out, at least, like a history lesson with lots and lots of cultural references to the World War II era: clothes, popular songs and movies, 1940’s slang, rationing, sports, food. Finally, about three-fourths of the way through the book delivered a gut punch, and things started happening and I began to get interested.

Children’s fiction books set during World War II on the home front, USA, abound:
Don’t Talk To Me About the War by David Adler. Semicolon review here.
Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata. Semicolon review here.
Blue by Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Semicolon review here.
Keep Smiling Through by Ann Rinaldi.
My Secret War: The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, Long Island, New York, 1941 by Mary Pope Osborne.
Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows, Hawaii, 1941 by Barry Denenberg.
Don’t You Know There’s a War On? by Avi.
Homefront by Doris Gwaltney.
Lily’s Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff.
WIllow Run by Patricia Reilly GIff.
On the Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck.
Autumn Street by Lois Lowry.
Stepping on the Cracks by Mary Downing Hahn.
Taking Wing by Nancy Graff.
Aloha Means Come Back: The Story of a World War II Girl by Thomas and Dorothy Hoobler.
Journey to Topaz by Yochiko Uchida.
Love You, Soldier by Amy Hest.
Pearl Harbor Is Burning! by Kathleen Kudlinski.

Jimmy’s Stars is a worthy addition to this list, the story of Ellie McKelvey whose adored older brother Jimmie is drafted and sent to Europe as a medic in 1944. Ms. Rodman evokes the time period well and tells the story of a girl who is sad and proud and angry all at the same time as she misses her big brother and wishes for him to come home.

Other reviews of Jimmy’s Stars:

Melissa at Book Nut: “The thing that carries this book from the beginning, is Ellie. She’s so real, so believable, so heart-breakingly hopeful that she literally leaps off the page and into your heart. You want her life to be okay, everything to go on as normal, and yet nothing can because of the war.”

Maw Books: “What made Jimmy’s Stars so great for me was the raw emotions that Ellie had. She really stepped right out of the pages of the book for me. I was also swept away into a different time and place as Mary Ann Rodman’s attention to historical accuracy and detail was superb.”

Looking Glass Review: “Packed with intimate details about life in America during World War II, this book will leave readers with a meaningful picture of what it was like to live through those very hard years.”

Enrichment activities for Jimmy’s Stars.

Young Adult Fiction of 2008: The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Oct28

Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s nonfiction study, Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, won a Newbery Honor medal in 2006 for its compilation of accounts of what it was like to grow up in Hitler’s youth organization, Hitler Youth. In The Boy Who Dared Bartoletti returns to the Third Reich to tell the story of a boy who joined the Hitler Youth, but secretly and courageously resisted the Nazi regime until he was caught by the police.

The subtitle to this book is “A Novel Based on the True Story of a Hitler Youth.” The book reads like a novel in some ways. We get to hear the thoughts and fears of and imprisoned seventeen year old, Helmuth, as he reminisces about his growing up years under the growing shadow of Nazism. However, it’s obvious that the novel is constrained by the facts of the case, so to speak. From the beginning of the story, when the omniscient narrator tells us from Helmuth’s prison cell that “the executioner works on Tuesdays,” we know that that there is no happy ending in store for Helmuth Hubener, the protagonist of the novel.

Then there are various facts that lend interest to the story but that probably wouldn’t have occurred to a novelist writing a story not based on true events. For instance, Helmuth’s family is Mormon. In the author notes at the end of the book, Ms. Bartoletti says that the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints had about one thousand members living in Hamburg during the war. Another set of unlikely facts: Helmuth’s mother marries a Rottenfuhrer in Hitler’s SS, a dedicated Nazi who nevertheless adopts Helmuth and writes a letter in his support after his arrest for espionage.

I have a particular fascination with World War II stories, especially those that take place inside Nazi Germany or in Nazi-occupied territory. I think we’re all still, almost seventy years later, trying to figure out how the Holocaust and the other evils of Nazism could have happened in a “civilized” country. So I look for clues in stories of the times. The clues here are the ones you’ve heard before: the people were economically devastated. They believed Hitler would lead them to prosperity and to dignity for Germany after the ignominious defeat of World War I. When the Jews were persecuted, the bullies joined in the bullying and the good people looked away. When freedoms were taken away one by one, people said it was temporary, that these were emergency measures, that everything would be O.K. eventually.

The problem is that I look at Nazi Germany, and I see ideas and attitudes that are very much alive here and now. No, we in the United States in 2008 are not Nazis. History does not really repeat itself; it echoes. And the echoes I hear now are disturbing. People in a time of economic crisis are looking for a saviour. Innocents are killed daily by abortion, and good people look the other way. Candidates talk about taking away freedom of speech in the name of fairness, and we are oblivious.

I didn’t mean for this to turn into a politicized review, but oh, God, remove our blind spots and have mercy on us.

The Boy Who Dared is a good reminder of what we have to lose and what can happen in a country that loses its moral compass.