WWII – Peaceful Reader

Weekend warrior.

Woe is me! I have to spend half my day sitting around Barnes and Noble today, browsing through books. My daughter is in the local production of Junie B., Jingle bells, Batman smells! and they are performing from 1-3 to happy book shoppers. I’m sure I won’t leave empty handed and I wish I could take a handful of book bloggers with me! I can think of much worse places to wile away my afternoon.

A concentration camp would be top on that list after spending several hours in the middle of the night reading the end of Elizabeth Wein’s finely crafted historical fiction Rose under fire. Brutal, well-written, but brutal, brutal, brutal. The bonds she made in the women’s concentration camp carry you through the most horrible descriptions. I loved Code Name Verity and this is a companion novel, making use of the same war, different setting with kick-ass female characters/heroines and a few carry over characters. Both Wein’s novels and Junie B. have nothing in common except they all feature powerful young women.

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Rose explains to her boyfriend Nick her aspirations and frustrations:

Finally Nick said sympathetically, “What’s made you so
bloodthirsty?”

“I’m not bloodthirsty.
There’s no blood in a pilotless plane, is there? I’m a good pilot. I’ve probably been flying five years longer
than half the boys in 150 Wing. I flew with
Daddy from coast to coast across America when I was fifteen and I did all the
navigation. You’ve never flown a
Tempest, or a Mustang, or a Mark Fourteen Spitfire-I’ve flown them all, dozens
of times. They’re wasting me just
because I’m a girl! They won’t even let
us fly to France-they’re prepping men for supply and taxi to the front lines,
guys with hundreds’ fewer hours than me, but they’re just passing over the
women pilots. It isn’t fair.” (14)

Have a happy Saturday. Here in Iowa it is a gorgeous day outside and I have to finish cleaning up my garden.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Wow. This book stunned me. What a fascinating look at WWII. There are so many fiction stories from a variety of viewpoints and I’ve read quite a few from this time period but this is the first one that gave me insight into the role women played in the war.

I have a terrible summer cold and my chest hurts and I smell like Vick’s-this book helped me get through a few sleepless nights. I’d read a little then try to go to sleep, fail, then read a few more sections. Invariably something would completely hook me and I’d have to read just ONE more section. And then I wake up super groggy and still smelling like Vick’s.

A sample:

We weren’t allowed to talk to the pilots, either. I made three jumps that week-the women do one less training jump than the men, AND they make us jump first. I don’t know if that’s because we’re considered cannier than men, or braver, or bouncier, or just less likely to survive and therefore aren’t worth the extra petrol and parachute packing. At any rate, Maddie saw me twice in the air and never got to say hello.
I got to watch her fly, though.
You know, I envied her. I envied her the simplicity of her work, the spiritual cleanness of it-Fly the plane, Maddie. That was all she had to do. There was no guilt, no moral dilemma no argument or anguish-danger, yes, but she always knew what she was facing. And I envied that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don’t suppose I had any idea what I “wanted” and so I was chosen, not choosing. There’s glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will. (140)

Elizabeth Wein created an enviably strong friendship between these two young women characters and weaves an amazingly, intricate tale around them. I know many have already read this one but if you haven’t you must and it is best to read it fresh without a lot of blah-blah from reviewers/bloggers.

Find Elizabeth on twitter @EWien2412 and at her website. Wein’s new title, Rose under Fire, was released in June.

Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

Name recognition works because as I scanned the new book section at our library Clare Vanderpool’s name popped out at me like it had bright lights flashing around it. Remember the wonderful historical fiction Moon over Manifest? See my review here. She won the Newberry medal for her debut novel. Now she’s written another amazing story featuring two new characters, Jack Baker and Early Auden.

From the inside panel:

After his mother’s death at the end of WWII, Jack Baker is suddenly uprooted from his home in Kansas and placed in a boys’ boarding school in Maine. There he meets Early Auden, the strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as an unending story and collects clippings about sightings about sightings of a black bear in the nearby mountains.

Feeling lost and adrift, Jack can’t help being drawn to Early, who refuses to believe what everyone accepts to be the truth about the great Appalachian bear, timber rattlesnakes, and the legendary school hero known as the Fish, who was lost in the war.

When Jack and Early find themselves alone at school, they set out for the Appalachian Trail on a quest for the great black bear. Along the way, they meet some truly strange characters, several of them dangerous, all lost in some way, and each a part of the pi story Early continues to reveal. Jack’s ability to be a steadfast friend to Early will be tested as the boys discover things they never knew about themselves and others.

Like Moon over Manifest Vanderpool combines plucky characters with an amazingly tale that contains both historical fiction with magical realism. My library copy was filled with sticky notes as I marveled over her magical way with words.

Quotes:

“Monday morning came like a cool Kansas shower on a hot, humid day. In other words, it was a relief. Because now at least I had a schedule. I knew that history came first, followed by Latin, English, and math.” {14}

“Finally, I pulled the Sweetie Pie along the dock with a scraping noise that sounded like a cat on a midnight prowl. Preston, Sam, Robbie Dean, and the others all watched with pained grimaces on their faces, waiting for the boat and the noise to come to a stop. I stood up and felt the evil Sweetie Pie pitch left, then right, and before I could say Jack Tar, I was upended in Wabenaki Bay.” {43}

“We walked a ways in silence. Early looked up at the night sky as the clouds cleared and found the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. We followed it into the darkness, in search of another great bear-this one on the Appalachian Trail. My feet were heavy, and the woods closed in around us. There was only darkness and danger in front of us. And now there were dogs and pirates behind us. Early’s quest had gone on long enough. It was time to turn back. I opened my mouth to say so, but Early spoke first.” {187-188}

I can tell you Early does not plan on turning back…

Vanderpool can turn a phrase, can’t she? I feel like there’s a little Bluegrass music playing in the background as Early and Jack explore the Appalachian Trail finding more than just adventure.

NY Times article about Navigating Early
Clare Vanderpool’s website.

Three Unique Picture Books You'll Enjoy!

In between chapter books Groovy Girl and I have had the chance to explore three very cool books. She is fascinated with Russia and chose to do a report on the country for school. She brought this book home from her school library:

Russian Girl; Life in an Old Russian Town (1994) by Russ Kendall. Meet 9-year-old Olga Surikovain in this nonfiction picture book and share a little of what her day is like. Her family lives in the small town of Suzdal-150 miles east of Moscow. The photos are lovely and Groovy Girl poured over them, trying to fully understand Olga’s life. Even though this title is “older” the information is worthwhile and shares a time in Russia’s history. My paternal grandfather came from a small town on the Russian/Polish border and I love to see my girl explore these interesting roots. The back of the book includes two recipes, an alphabet of Russian letters,and a good list of Russian words and names.

Running with the Horses (2009) by Alison Lester. This is a fictionalized version of an event that occurred during WWII; the rescue of the Lipizzaner stallions from the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Nina, a fictional young girl, works with her father, the stable master. The academy has closed and the war comes closer every day. Eventually her father and another stable hand, Karl, decide to take the horses across the border to her deceased mother’s parent’s farm. The story is beautifully told and the illustrations are a gorgeous mix of pencil drawings and what look like photographs but may actually be paintings.

An Edible Alphabet; 26 Reasons to Love the Farm (2011) by Carol Watterson and Michela Sorrentino. I LOVE this book. Every page stands for something I believe in with all my heart. It is a kid-friendly manifest of why we need to be eating locally from farms and our own backyards. It has snippets of healthy information swirled into beautiful illustrations. I’ve already ordered it for my school library collection. On a personal note I have an organic kid’s book on my computer with this same title-no kidding. Guess I better get busy and finish it before some else writes the book.

happy reading!

War is not the answer; Ellen Feldman's Next to Love

Next to Love; A Novel

Ellen Feldman

2011

289 pages

I read 2 adult fiction books in October-rare for me. Both were outstanding! Next to Love focuses on three young women, all childhood friends, and the men in their lives during World War II and after. Each woman’s story captivated me. Grace, Babe, and Millie experience the beginning of the war through the departure of the men they love and the end of the war with what they are left with and, as a reader, we are privvy to what direction their lives take, and how they get on with the business of living.

Grace, already married with a daughter, is mad at her husband, Charlie:

Talk to me, she wants to throw open the window and shout. Tell me. Are you afraid? Are you secretly thrilled, a little boy with a stick playing at being a soldier, a man going off on a great adventure, leaving us behind, breaking my heart? No, that isn’t fair. He is not enjoying this either. (27)

Babe and Claude are a mismatched pair who meet accidentally at the Carnegie library . Claude checks out books for her in an act of kindness, demonstrating his rebellious nature to her early on:

Three years later, they began going together. By then he was teaching at the high school, and she was selling ribbons at Diamond’s. His mother, sensing a rebellious nature as well as an inferior bloodline, was brokenhearted; his father merely disapproved. The town was full of nice girls from good families. Why did their son have to get mixed up with one whose father worked in the hat factory and who had to work herself? (20)

Millie and Pete are newlyweds, adjusting to life, when he enlists. His last night in town they’ve had cocktails and dinner with their friends all at Grace and Charlie’s home. Later, Pete sleeps while Millie lies awake worrying.

She looks at the clock. It is four-thirty. She gets out of bed and goes down the hall to the bathroom. By the time she comes back, he is awake. And she is bathed and dressed and wearing a big perfectly lipsticked smile. Nobody likes a gloomy Gertie. (37)

Millie, Babe, and Grace have very different journeys to travel throughout the story yet each leads to the same conclusion-war is a miserable way to solve conflict. Feldman’s story takes the reader deep into how WWII affected the lives of these women but on a greater whole how men and women were torn apart. Marriages and families were destroyed. The children of soldiers were forever changed because their father came back and struggled or didn’t come back at all. I don’t know if the author is a peace activist but she makes the point very clear: War is not the answer.

Think of the soldiers of today and what they’ve seen and what they’ve been ordered to do in the name of freedom. Fighting against any enemy causes irreparable damage to a person’s psyche, making it extremely traumatic to re-enter civilian life. I hope many read this book and take it’s message to heart. It is simply an excellent historical fiction. I plan to read more by Ellen Feldman. -click to check out her website.

Other reviews:
Charlotte’s Web of Books
Diane at Bookchickdi
Alyce from At Home with Books