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I was going through my picture books this morning trying to get them a little organized, and I came across The Wall, which I had completely forgotten that I owned.  I wish I remembered it so for Memorial Day, but I didn't so I thought I would write about it today.

On a cool, breezy day, a young boy and his father visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.  The boys notices that the wall long long, shiny and shaped like a V.  The names on the wall are in straight lines, the "letters march side by side, like rows of soldier."

But this isn't just a sightseeing visit.  The boy and his father are looking for the boy's grandfather.  As they search for his name, the boy sees different people approach the way - a wounded veteran, an elderly couple, a group of school girls - and the different mementos left by friends and family members who are still mourning the loss of the sons, brother, fathers, grandfathers  Meanwhile, the boys father searches for the name of the father he lost when he was the age his son is now.

Finally, there it is - George Munoz.  Son and father make a rubbing of his names, then quietly stand in front of it together, no doubt thinking about what a loss they have suffered.

Because, besides honoring the veterans who lost their lives in the Vietnam War, the wall also reminds us of what a profound loss to family and friends even a single life can be.  And I think Eve Bunting has really captured that so well in this book, as well as what a truly emotional experience visiting the Wall can be, regardless of your feelings about the Vietnam War.

Ronald Himler's quiet impressionistic styled watercolor illustrations and his palette of background grays and semi-colorful foreground figures of visitors and mementos really reflect the somber mood of visiting such a meaningful visit.

I created this blog because I was interested in the impact war has on children effected by it and I think the little boy's last words really epitomize that impact:

"But I'd rather my grandpa here, taking me to the river, telling me to button my jacket because it's cold.
I'd rather have him here."

This book is recommended for readers age 5+
This book was purchased for my personal library

UPDATE:

A few years ago, I wrote that when I was too young to understand, I wore a MIA bracelet even though I was too young to understand what it was about.  The name on the bracelet was James W. Grace.  James was born in 1939 in Louisiana and shot down on June 14, 1969, which is, incidentally, flag day, and has been MIA since then.  Eventually, my bracelet fell apart, but with the advent of the Internet, I periodically did a search for James to see if maybe he had made it home.  Sadly, he is still MIA and his name has been listed on the Vietnam Memorial.  Years ago, when I visited it, I did a rubbing just like the father and son in the story:


So it was time to do another search, and I was please to find a photo of James on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall of Faces

James William Grace 1939-1969

And just in case you are wondering what happens to all those mementos left at the wall, it is all explained in this 11 minute video, and trust me, it is well worth the tie it takes to watch.

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Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin (2015) Roaring Brook Press

As he did with the spy, Harry Gold, in Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, Steven Sheinkin uses one man to tell a much larger story in Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War.  That man is the infamous leaker of the so-called Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg.   A veteran himself, and a former Pentagon employee, Ellsberg initially believed that the war in Vietnam was a noble cause.  However, the more he learned, the less he believed so.  Eventually, based on the information to which he was privy and the US populace was not, he changed his mind completely.

While Most Dangerous is an excellently researched biographical and historical account, and can be  appreciated for that aspect alone, Steve Sheinkin's book also will also promote reflection on the nature of national security, personal privacy, democracy, freedom of the press, and foreign intervention.  We have been on very similar ground before. 

Selected quotes:

page 149

"They all drove to the Capitol for the traditional outdoor inauguration ceremony.  Johnson watched Nixon take the oath of office, wondering what lay ahead.  "I reflected on how inadequate any man is for the office of the American Presidency," he later recalled.  "The magnitude of the job dwarfs every man who aspires to it.""

page 160

"He had often heard antiwar protesters shouting that Americans were fighting on the wrong side of the Vietnam War. They were missing the point. "It wasn't that we were on the wrong side," Ellsberg concluded, "We were the wrong side.""

FBI agents began questioning the Ellsbergs friends and relatives.  They even attempted to obtain Patricia Ellsberg's dental records, but her dentist refused to cooperate.  Nixon's operatives broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor in a failed attempt to steal his medical records.  They were searching for anything to use in a campaign to discredit Ellsberg. 

page 263

 "Psychologically, it's not so bothersome, because we believe in what we're doing," Patricia Ellsberg said about the feeling of being watched by one's own government.  "But I think it's troublesome for the country that there is surveillance of citizens, and that the right of privacy is being threatened."

Read an excerpt from Most Dangerous here.
Awards and accolades:

• Starred reviews in Voya, Horn Book, Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly
• National Book Award Finalist in Young People's Literature
• Cybils Award for Nonfiction
• YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults

Other Steve Sheinkin books reviewed on Shelf-employed

• The Port Chicago 50  
• Bomb

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Congratulations to the 2015 Newbery Medal: Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson. Last Stop on Market Street is also a New York Times Book Review Notable Children’s Book of 2015 and a Wall Street Journal Best Children’s Book of 2015.  To read an interesting piece on why the this year’s Newbery Medal is …

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Fifty years ago during their North American tour, The Beatles played to the largest audience in their career against the backdrop of a nation shattering along economic, ethnic, and political lines. Although on the surface the events of August 1965 would seem unconnected, they nevertheless illustrate how the world was changing and how music reflected that chaotic cultural evolution.

The post The Beatles, the Watts Riots, and America in transition, August 1965 appeared first on OUPblog.

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Memorial Day is always a poignant moment -- a time to remember and reflect on the ultimate sacrifice made by so many military personnel over the decades -- but this year three big anniversaries make it particularly so. Seventy years ago, Americans celebrated victory in a war in which these sacrifices seemed worthwhile.

The post Remembering the “good” and “bad” wars: Memorial Day 40, 50, and 70 years on appeared first on OUPblog.

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You might have seen the great post by Jon Page entitled My Top 10 War Novels. Like most people I was entertained and added more books to my ever growing ‘to be read’ list. I was also thinking about all the great war novels that were missed; in fact I made a mental list of […]

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There can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war. Jon Stallworthy’s celebrated anthology The New Oxford Book of War Poetry spans from Homer’s Iliad, through the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, and the wars fought since. The new edition, published to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, includes a new introduction and additional poems from David Harsent and Peter Wyton amongst others. In the three videos below Jon Stallworthy discusses the significance and endurance of war poetry. He also talks through his updated selection of poems for the second edition, thirty years after the first.

Jon Stallworthy examines why Britain and America responded very differently through poetry to the outbreak of the Iraq War.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jon Stallworthy on his favourite war poems, from Thomas Hardy to John Balaban.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As The New Oxford Book of War Poetry enters its second edition, editor Jon Stallworthy talks about his reasons for updating it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jon Stallworthy is a poet and Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Oxford University. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of many distinguished works of poetry, criticism, and translation. Among his books are critical studies of Yeats’s poetry, and prize-winning biographies of Louis MacNiece and Wilfred Owen (hailed by Graham Greene as ‘one of the finest biographies of our time’). He has edited and co-edited numerous anthologies, including the second edition of The New Oxford Book of War Poetry.

 

The post What can poetry teach us about war? appeared first on OUPblog.

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By Mary L. Dudziak

On 6 June 2014 at Normandy, President Barack Obama spoke movingly of the day that “blood soaked the water, bombs broke the sky,” and “entire companies’ worth of men fell in minutes.” The 70th anniversary of D-Day was a moment to remember the heroes and commemorate the fallen. The nation’s claim “written in the blood on these beaches” was to liberty, equality, freedom, and human dignity. Honoring both the veterans of D-Day and a new generation of soldiers, Obama emphasized: “people cannot live in freedom unless free people are prepared to die for it.”

Death is seen as the price of liberty in war. But war deaths are more than a trade-off or a price, shaping soldiers, communities, and the state itself. Drew Gilpin Faust wrote that during the Civil War the “work of death” was the nation’s “most fundamental and enduring undertaking.” Proximity to the dead, dying and injured transformed the United States, creating “a veritable ‘republic of suffering’ in the words [of] Frederick Law Olmsted.”

President Lincoln stood on American soil when he remembered the losses at Gettysburg. Does it matter that the site of carnage in World War II commemorated by President Obama was a transcontinental flight away? Americans were deeply affected by that war’s losses, even though the “work of death” would not so deeply permeate the national experience simply because the dying happened far away.

Since World War II, war’s carnage has become more distant. The Korean War did not generate a republic of suffering in the United States. Instead, as Susan Brewer has shown, Americans had to be persuaded that Korea should matter to them. During the war in Vietnam, division and conflict were central to American culture and politics. A shared experience of death and dying was not.

If war and suffering played a role in constituting American identity during the Civil War, it has moved to the margins of American life in the 21st century. War losses are a defining experience for the families and communities of those deployed. Much effort is placed on minimizing even that direct experience with war deaths through the use of high-tech warfare, like drones piloted far from the battlefield.

Over time, the United States has exported its suffering, enabling the nation to kill with less risk of American casualties. Whatever the benefits of these developments, it is worth reflecting upon the opposite of Faust’s conception of Civil War culture: how American identity is constituted through isolation from the work of war death, through an export of suffering. With a protected “homeland” and exported violence, perhaps what was once a republic has become instead, in war, an empire of suffering.

Mary L. Dudziak is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory Law School. Her books include Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey and Cold War Civil Rights. Her most recent book is War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences. She will be on the panel “Scholars as Teachers: Authors Discuss Using Their Books in the Classroom” at the SHAFR 2014 Annual Meeting on Saturday, 21 June 2014. Follow her on Twitter @marydudziak.

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The post This empire of suffering appeared first on OUPblog.

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Delphine, Vonetta and Fern are on their way back to Brooklyn from Oakland where they have spent the last little while getting to know their mother, Cecile.  Delivered unceremoniously back into the arms and admonishments of Big Ma, and back to Herkimer Street and Pa, Delphine knows that she has changed, but she surely didn't expect things in Brooklyn to have changed as well.

First off, Pa has lost his long face.  He's whistling Tempations songs, instead of Old Man River.  Right off, he wants to have a conversation with the girls, but Big Ma beats him to it. "Your Pa is keeping company with a woman in Brownsville." (p. 36)  Marva Hendrix is her name, and while Vonetta and Fern think this is fine and silly, Delphine is not so sure.

Next, Uncle Darnell is back from Vietnam.  But he isn't the same either.  The old Uncle D would be smiling and singing and laughing, but now, he seems distant and sick.  He wakes up shouting and isn't so interested in his nieces. 

Readers follow Delphine's journey into sixth grade as she navigates a changing family, grows her friendships, and figures out how to have a relationship with her distant mother.  P.S. Be Eleven is simply a joy to read.  Each character is here for a reason and adds to the story.  Delphine's voice is so perfect as are the voices of those around her.  Williams-Garcia paints a picture of Bed-Stuy in the 1960s, and she weaves the historical details in seamlessly.  This book seems timeless and should be on everyone's must read list!

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Title: Inside Out & Back Again    Author: Thanhha Lai    Publisher: Harper Collins

May Contain Spoilers

From Amazon:

Review:

I love books about different cultures or ways of life, and Inside Out & Back Again delivers up an emotionally enthralling account of a young Vietnamese girl’s flight from her home country to the US.  As I read Ha’s adventures, recounted in simple yet moving free verse, I wondered what it would be like to have everything familiar ripped away.  Before the fall of Saigon, life for Ha was happy and content, despite the growing hardships caused by the war.  Her father has been missing in action since she was an infant, but her family still holds out hope that he will return home one day.  She loves her family, she is doing well in school, and she is eager for her papaya tree to finally yield fruit.  Her three brothers are happy, as well, and they are excellent students with bright futures ahead of them.  Everything changes with the fall of Saigon.

Ha’s mother is trying valiantly to raise four children by herself, but life has gotten more difficult.  It’s harder to make ends meet, and the price of everything keeps climbing.  As the communists threaten Saigon, she has a family meeting and asks everyone what they should do.  Should they flee, and try to built a new life in a country without Ho Chi Min and the war?  Ha and her brother Thoi don’t want to go.  How can they leave Ha’s papaya tree and Thoi’s chicken?  The pain of leaving their most prized possessions was a bitter pill to swallow for a new life with no guarantees.  I don’t think I could have done it.  Photographs, clothing, memories; all were left behind in Vietnam.

I loved Ha and found her easy to relate to.  She has been thrust into a new life that she doesn’t want, and one that doesn’t seem to want her.  Her new neighbors in Alabama aren’t very neighborly, she can’t understand the confusing language she is immersed in, and her classmates mock and bully her.  Her teacher doesn’t understand her and doesn’t try to make her feel welcome.  Instead, Ha, a bright, curious girl, is left feeling stupid and ignorant.  As she begins to pick up the language, she wishes she did not understand the names she is called or the jokes that her peers make about her.  She is angry, justifiably, but there is no outlet for her rage.  Ha is the one who must make concessions to fit in with a group of kids who can only see

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Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt, Clarion Books, 2011, 368 pp, ISBN: 0547152604

Recap:
When Doug's dad loses his job, their family is forced to pick up and move to stupid Marysville. And moving is never easy, but it's even more difficult when half the town thinks you're some kind of skinny thug and your big brother's just come back from Vietnam. His father is pretty abusive too, but that's nothing new.


When Doug finds his way into the public library - So what? So what? It's not like he's reading books - things start to shift. Not very quickly, not so's you would even notice at first. But a change is coming.

Review:
Who would have ever thought that a book about Audobon's bird paintings would become one of my favorites of the whole year? Not me, that's for sure. But Gary Schmidt's Okay for Now won me over almost immediately.


I am telling you right now. Do not be dissuaded by the weird/boring cover or all of the Audobon talk. Okay for Now is will not disappoint. And I think the #1 reason why is Voice. I can't remember the last time I read a book with such an incredibly strong voice. My parents visited over the weekend (Hi, Mom!) and I read aloud to my mom pretty much the entire way to church and back because every single paragraph was better than the one before. I can still hear Doug's voice in my head saying "So what? So what? I'm not a chump!" in my head.


ALL of the characters in Doug's life are so real you would swear they exist in real life. I would not be surprised to find stupid Marysville on a map, and you know Mr. Powell would have Okay for Now on the front desk at the library.


I really want to keep this review short because the main point is this: Okay for Now is one stellar read. It's up against Wonderstruck on Thursday in the BoB, and not only am I confident that Wonderstruck is toast, I wouldn't be surprised if Okay for Now won the whole shebang.


Recommendation:
Read this book. Boy or girl, young or old, sports fan or bird watcher - you're going to love Okay for Now.

9 Comments on Okay for Now, last added: 3/22/2012

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Tina's Blog said, on 3/18/2012 6:26:00 AM

I loved this book, too! And you are right, it doesn't sound all that great when you throw in the part about the Audubon Society, but it is. Did you ever read The Wednesday Wars?

Juju at Tales of Whimsy.com said, on 3/18/2012 7:45:00 AM

This sounds really really awesome.

I love that you shared it with your mom.
Is she a reader?

Miss K said, on 3/18/2012 8:00:00 AM

I've got this one on my kindle with a bunch lined up before it, but I am looking forward to reading it.

My friend's parents sent her brother to bird-watching camp as punishment when he was a rebellious teen. This never fails to crack me up, especially since he can still identify all sorts of bird calls.

Katie DeKoster said, on 3/18/2012 1:55:00 PM

I am pretty sure that your blog was the first place I read about Okay for Now! And I think you recommended it to me when I started blogging again in Jan. Thank goodness I finally took your advice! I read The Wednesday Wars and thought it was pretty good, but I thought Okay for Now was way funnier and much more kid friendly. Of course, Okay for Now is much more fresh in my mind... What did you think of the pair?!

Katie DeKoster said, on 3/18/2012 1:56:00 PM

It is SO awesome :) My mom is a big time reader. She's the librarian at the HS where I went, and we get to talk books pretty much every time we talk. I'm just lucky :)

Katie DeKoster said, on 3/18/2012 1:57:00 PM

Oh my gosh - that is hilarious! I have never even heard of such a thing. Actually, that would probably make a really funny book!

Deb Marshall said, on 3/19/2012 7:14:00 AM

I know on the voice on this one! And the library and the connections the MC makes there..it was a wow for me that is sure. And...hi! Just popped over from OWL...now, back to read your guest post!

Kate said, on 3/19/2012 8:49:00 AM

This sounds really great and I love books with a strong voice. Adding it to my list!

Allison said, on 3/21/2012 10:23:00 PM

Siiiiigh, I love this one! Definitely one of my favorites of 2011, and I'm still sort of mourning the fact that it didn't win a Newbery.

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The United States was plagued by social unrest throughout the 1960’s. 1968 stands out as the most militant and contentious year of the decade with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In that same year, the Selective Service office announced that its December quota for the draft would be the highest thus far, leading countless Americans to engage in acts of civil disobedience. American Catholics, who were led to accept mainstream cultural values and unhesitatingly support foreign policy faced a changing identity brought on by a remarkable act known as the Catonsville Nine. Led by two priests, the Catonsville Nine would set off a wave of other Catholic protests against the Vietnam War. The following excerpt from Mark Massa’s The American Catholic Revolution describes this transformative moment in American Catholic history.

At 12:30 on the afternoon of May 17, 1968, an unlikely crew of seven men and two women arrived at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Catonsville, Maryland, a tidy suburb of Baltimore. Their appearance at 1010 Frederick Road, however, was only tangentially related to the Knights. The target of their pilgrimage was Selective Service Board 33, housed on the second floor of the K. of C. Hall. The nondescript parcel they carried with them contained ten pounds of homemade napalm, whipped up several evenings before by Dean Pappas, a local physics teacher who had discovered the recipe in a booklet published by the U.S. Special Forces (two parts gasoline, one part Ivory Flakes). On entering the office, one of them explained calmly to the three surprised women typing and filing what was going to happen next. But either out of shock or because they hadn’t heard the announcement clearly the women continued about their business until the strangers began snatching up 1-A files, records of young men whose draft lottery numbers made them most likely to be drafted to fight in Vietnam. At that point one of the women working in the office began to scream.

The raiders began stuffing the 1-A files (and as many 2-As and 1-Ys as they could grab) into wire trash baskets they had brought for the purpose. When one of the office workers tried dialing the police, Mary Moylan, one of the nine intruders, put her finger on the receiver button, calmly advising the distraught worker to wait until the visitors were finished. The burning of the draft records was intended to be entirely nonviolent, although one of the office workers had to be physically restrained from stopping the protesters, in the course of which she suffered some scratches on her leg. With that one exception, the raid went according to plan. Indeed, as Daniel Berrigan, S.J. one of the leaders of the event, later remembered it.

We took the A-1 [sic] files, which of course were the most endangered of those being shipped off. And we got about 150 of those in our arms and went down the staircase to the parking lot. And they burned very smartly, having been doused in this horrible material. And it was all over in 10 or 15 minutes.

Once Berrigan and the others left the office, Moylan said to the office worker with the phone, “Now you can call whoever you wish.” But instead of calling the police she hurled it through the window, hoping to get attention of workmen outside the building, which she did: one of the workmen quickly rushed up to the office to see what the ruckus was. But his arrival on the scene came too late to interrupt the protest. A small group of reporters and photographers, as well as a TV crew, had already gathered, having been tipped off by a memb

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The year is 1966. Dean Kohler dreams of making it big with his rock band. Then he gets his draft notice around the same time he receives a national record deal. Dean ships out and finds himself in Qui Nhon, Vietnam serving as a military policeman. Though he sees death and horror, he counts himself lucky that he's not fighting in the front lines. Then his captain orders him to form a rock band. For this musician, these words would help him bring some escape from the terrors of the war. Rock'N'Roll Soldier is one of those books that will haunt you with intense images of war. But it will also show you the power of music and camaraderie during a difficult time. Read more of my review at YABC.

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Holling Hoodhood lives in a perfect house, with a perfect lawn, smack-dab in the middle of a town that is either Jewish or Catholic. Holling's family is Presbyterian, which has never been a problem until this year. You see, Wednesdays are religious instruction day. This means that the Jewish kids head off to Hebrew School, and the Catholic kids head off to catechism. Holling has nowhere to be except school, and his teacher Mrs. Baker is now teaching a class of one. She is not pleased.

Holling is soon completing tasks like cleaning the chalkboard erasers, and dusting the classroom. And then it gets worse. Mrs. Baker brings in the Shakespeare!

Gary D. Schmidt has written an incredible story that is meaty, articulate, and important. Set in the Vietnam era United States, the Hoodhood family is staring change in the face. The perfect house and the perfect lawn isn't so perfect inside. As Holling tries to manage Wednesdays of 7th grade, his teenage sister Heather is becoming politically minded and estranged from her dad. Holling is seeing blatant racism directed at his Vietnamese classmate as local soldiers lose their lives.

Woven into the story is a innocent humor that brings the reader effortlessly along. From the escapee class pets, to Holling's stage debut, The Wednesday Wars is a pleasure to read. It's a solid dose of good old fashioned storytelling.

Imagine that!

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CRACKER!: THE BEST DOG IN VIETNAM
by Cynthia Kadohata
Atheneum, February 2007
Review copy purchased at Liberty Books

Cracker is completely devoted to his boy, Willie. Unfortunately, Willie's dad lost his job and the family has to move into an apartment building that does not allow pets. Willie has one month to find a new home for Cracker. Time is running out when Willie sees the notice that German Shepherds are wanted by the Army for use in the Vietnam War.

Because the book is told from the dual perspectives of Cracker and the humans in his life, we get a sense of how hard this separation is for both Cracker and Willie. Besides being devoted, Cracker is smart, independent, and quite willful. His new handler, Rick, joined the army at 17 planning to "whip the world" and escape running the family hardware store. Rick is inexperienced and naive, gets on the wrong side of the sarge, and winds up with Cracker as his dog.

It takes some time and not a few forbidden hot dog treats, but Rick and Cracker become a team.

The book takes the reader through the process of training a military dog to sniff out booby traps and snipers, and the reader accompanies Rick and Cracker on missions. Dogs die, friends die, legs are blown off, and Rick suffers mental anguish about all he sees and experiences.

In the end, though, the book is about the incredible bond of loyalty between a man and his dog.

In the author's note, Kadohata explains that 4,000 dogs served in Vietnam. "Dogs were considered military equipment; at the war's end they were considered surplus military equipment." These dogs saved approximately 10,000 human lives. 1,000 dogs died in Vietnam. 200 dogs were reassigned to other U.S. military bases. It is unknown what became of the rest. Kadohata interviewed dog handlers who served in the Vietnam War, and several photos in the back of the book show some of the men and their dogs.

I asked Amazing 5th Grade Girl Reader (AGR) to read CRACKER! and let me know what she thought of it. AGR has read KIRA, KIRA and WEEDFLOWER, so she is in a position to place CRACKER in the context of Kadohata's other books.

CRACKER was AGR's least favorite of Kadohata's books. She thought it was slower, and not as exciting. The war part was intense, but confusing. AGR said she would have appreciated a glossary of place names, weapons, vehicles, and military jargon, such as "Charlie" for Viet Cong. She now has some idea of what the Vietnam War was about -- something she never knew before. She enjoyed reading from the point of view of the dog and thinking about how dogs might interpret our words.

Another one of my 5th graders is currently reading CRACKER!. He is a military history buff, so stay tuned for his quite different take on the book.

Links: Author's website (has an excerpt from the first chapter)

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