Two years ago, twelve-year-old Matt, the son of a American soldier and a Vietnamese woman, is airlifted out of his home country of Vietnam and adopted by an American family.  He wakes up often with nightmares, but his adoptive mother and father are there to help sooth him.  They are able to give him the love and attention that he needs.  But he has many adjustments to make and must come to terms with his inner turmoil and guilt from leaving his country, his mother, his little brother, confusion over a father who abandoned them, misunderstanding over his mother who gave him away and apprehension over the love that is now shown to him from a wonderful family.

He was born in the war.  His entire life was the war.

He must also face his schoolmates who associate Matt with the war and their brothers and fathers who never came home.  Matt’s baseball coach and piano teacher both help heal the rift in Matt’s heart and close the divide between two seemingly different lives.   An incredible story of love, healing, and acceptance.

I loved it.  Loved it.

The verse just blew me away.  As I’m sitting here now wondering what passage I should quote, I want to choose every page I look at.

Mom, Celia, Chris, and me,
we used to be good friends . . .
He leaves his sentence
hanging in the air.

Sometimes the words people don’t say
as are powerful as the ones they do.

Until the war came,
I say, finishing his thought.

He nods.

Until the war came
and ruined everything.

Because of you Matt-the-rat,
there’s no place for me.

Because of you, my wife left.

Because of you, my brother died.

Because of you, I have stumps instead of legs.

My head starts to spin.

The kitchen suddenly feels
as small as the storage room
behind the janitor’s closet.

I’d better go finish my homework, Dad,
I say.
Instead,
I run downstairs
to the basement bathroom
and throw up.

And another:

For two years,
I learned about Vietnam,
but it wasn’t any
Vietnam I remembered.
The teacher
was a tiny woman
with small eyes
who always stayed
in one spot
when she talked,
but those words rolled
up and down,
up and down
the classroom walls
like a glass marble.

She told happy stories
of people and places
I did not know.

Colorful costumes
and carnival dragons
live in another Vietnam,
a Vietnam
that I do not remember.

I close my eyes.
I listen.

I try to remember
the colors,

but I cannot.

I try to form
dragons from
dust,

but I cannot.

I try again.
But I cannot.

My Vietnam
is drenched
in smoke and fog.

It has no parks
or playgrounds,
no classrooms
or teachers.

It is not
on any map
or in any book.

My Vietnam is
only
a pocketful
of broken pieces
I carry inside me.

Prose like this always brings such raw emotion to the surface.  Achingly beautiful.

Links of interest: More book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction, free verse novel.  Approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Scholastic.  April 1, 2009.
Hardcover, 224 pages. ISBN 0545080924
Source copy: Library
All the Broken Pieces is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Being at school wasn’t any better, because as much as he wanted to just play football, the other kids only wanted to play one thing:  war.  The other kids were always the heroes and even brought their father’s medals to prove it.  As much as he wanted to play the hero as well, he was always relegated to one role, the enemy, simply because he was Asian, and therefore looked like the enemy.

Donnie always protested and tried to explain that both his father and Uncle had been in the army during the World War II.  “How could your dad and uncle be in our army?” they taunted.  “Yeah, there wasn’t anybody looking like you guys on our side.  If you can’t prove it, you better start hiding.”

Donnie could prove it.  He’d seen his father’s medals, cap, and uniform at home but always got into trouble when he looked at them.  Wanting to know why his father and uncle never spoke of the war at home, his Uncle replied, “Real heroes don’t brag.  They just do what they are supposed to do.”

It wasn’t until they saw Donnie being chased home from school under the taunts of “Rat-tat-tat-tat! Pow! Pow! Pow! You’re dead, Donnie!” that they realized how bad things were at school and that they had the power to prove to his friends that their family had as much American loyalty as anybody else.  They promised that they would fix everything for Donnie the next day after school.  Donnie hoped that they would come through in a big way and that he would no longer be the enemy, but rather a friend.

Heroes is recommended as a great teaching tool or introduction to the concept that about 50,000 Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent served in the armed forces during World War II.  According to the author’s note, most notably was the 442nd Regimental Combat team, an all Japanese American regiment that fought in Europe and became one of the most highly decorated units in U.S. Army history.

This is a book that I’ll be sharing with  my two boys.

Links of interest:  Ken is also the author of  Baseball Saved Us (reviewed here), Be Water, My Friend:  The Early Years of Bruce Lee (reviewed here)  and Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story (reviewed here), all of which are also illustrated by Dom Lee.  Also check out the Maw Books interview with Ken Mochizuki.
Genre:  Picture Book, Fiction.  Ages 4-8.
Publisher: Lee and Low Books.  March 1997
Paperback, 32 pages.
Heroes is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powells, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Jamie Dexter knows all about the army.  After all, she is 12 3/4, not to be confused for 12.  Jamie’s father, the Colonel, is the chief of staff at their home, the army base at Ford Hood, Texas.  TJ, Jamie’s older brother plans on joining the army as soon as he’s out of high school and go to Vietnam.  Jamie can’t think of anything finer than to be a soldier and would the do the same thing if she could.  So when TJ actually does join the army, she becomes very confused when their father is upset and tries to talk him into going to college instead.  Isn’t joining the army that very best thing that he could do?  Why is her father so upset?

She’s thrilled though and can’t wait to get TJ’s exciting letters from the warfront.  Instead his first letter isn’t a letter at all.  It’s just a roll of undeveloped film that he asks her to develop.  Doesn’t he know that she doesn’t know how to process film?  Jamie volunteers at the rec center on the base and plays countless games of gin rummy with Private Hollister.  He mentions that there’s the darkroom and introduces her to another soldier who can teach her how to develop the black and white film.  At first, when she sees the images, she doesn’t understand why he chooses to  shoot what he does.  But slowly, the reality of the war sinks in.  She realizes that he could actually get hurt and die.  War is no longer what she thought it was.

Now her friend Private Hollister is in danger of being shipped overseas and she doesn’t want him to go.  She tries to convince her father not to sign his orders.

That night I spread out TJ’s Vietnam photographs on my bed.  The soldier in the wheelchair, the bandaged stump of what had been his right leg pointing straight at the camera.  A terrified child, naked to the waist, hands to his ears, running down the road, a helicopter hovering in the distance.  The soldier ont he stretcher, the wound soaking his bandages chest.  A hollow-eyed GI staring at the camera, the skin burned and scarred across his cheeks and forehead.

I left them all on the Colonel’s desk, fanned out like a hand of cards, where he would find them in the morning when he sat down to drink his coffee.

Shooting the Moon was a multi-sensory experience for me.  It brought so much of my own personal life into the story that I couldn’t help but relate to it on so many different levels.  My own brother is in the National Guard and has been ever since college.  He’s traveled to well over 25 countries including Iraq twice.  I know what it’s like to have a brother in harms way and pray each night that he will arrive home safely.  I’ve seen how hard it is on his wife and four children.  I know what it’s like to have him gone for Christmas and Thanksgiving  And then to eagerly await in the crowd as his plane touches down.  What’s even more peculiar is that my brother is also a photographer.  He brings home countless number of photos from his travels.  A lot of sightseeing and a lot of his bleak surroundings.  His wall at home is covered with amazing framed photographs of the world.

As if that’s not enough, I really related to the photography part of Shooting the Moon.  Having my degree in photography and having spent a lot of time in a darkroom myself, I could smell the chemicals that Jamie used while developing her film.  As she was in the dark taking the film off of the roll and onto the reel, I could feel with my hands the same sensation of trying to do the same thing completely blind.  The frustration of having to start over when it messes up.   I felt as thought I was in front of the enlarger in the dark, focusing my image, inserting the paper, and waiting and watching as I saw the image come forth in the trays of chemicals.   I loved being back in there with Jamie and I now realize just how long it’s been since I’ve been in the darkroom.  Man, I want to do it again right now.

Jamie’s father loves to garden.  Besides photography and reading, my third love is gardening.  During the spring, summer, and fall you will find me outside every day tending to my flower garden and vegetable garden.  A couple of years ago, I even received my Master Gardener’s certificate, one of the the most enjoyable things I have ever done.  There is something about being out there with the sun on your shoulder and the dirt under your hands that is amazing.  It’s soothing.  It’s satisfying to see the beauty that you have helped to bring out in the world around you.  I could completely understand why the Colonel would come home from a long day of being a soldier and work out in his garden.  It was his way to do something for himself, a stress reliever and a way to bring some beauty into a world of chaos and war.  I loved seeing him work out in the garden.

I loved Shooting the Moon. Highly recommended.  Don’t miss it.  Seriously.

Links of interest:  Frances O’Roark Dowell’s website.
Genre:  Juvenile Historical Fiction, approx ages 9-12.
Publisher: Atheneum.  January 29, 2008.
Hardcover, 176 pages.  ISBN 1416926909
Shooting the Moon is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

The year is 1967 and the Vietnam war is in full swing. Holling Hoodhood (try to say that ten times over) is in seventh grade at Camillo Junior High. Holling is convinced that his teacher Mrs. Baker hates his guts. Not only does Mrs. Baker hate Holling, but Holling is a Presbyterian, which means while on Wednesday afternoons when all the Jews go to  Temple Beth-El and the Catholics go to Saint Adelbert’s, Holling is left alone with Mrs. Baker. There is nowhere worse to be on Wednesday afternoons, alone with a teacher who hates your guts. But it does get worse. Mrs. Baker decides that they are going to use this time to read Shakespeare! Shakespeare to a seventh grader boy is just about as bad as it gets. But it does gets worse. He soon finds himself playing the part of a fairy in the local Shakespearean play wearing yellow tights with feathers on the butt!

The Wednesday Wars takes us on the “mishaps and adventures” as Holling tries to make his way through the school year unscathed. This was laugh out funny and yet, if I was the crying type, I could have shed a tear or two. I loved the relationships between Holling and his friends, his sister, and especially that of Mrs. Baker, whom I absolutely loved. It reminded me of when I was that age in school and everybody thinks all the teachers hate you, but really they don’t. In fact, they just might be to nice to us. If I had a teacher who did half the things that Mrs. Baker did for Holling, I think she’d be my favorite. Although, teachers can’t do anything now near close to what they did otherwise you’d have the term “child predator” flying everywhere. And Holling’s parents?! What was up with them? His teachers took more of an interest in Holling than his own parents. I felt so sorry for him.

The Wednesday Wars is a 2008 Newbery Honor book and deservedly so. I still question why Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices of a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz(my review here) won when it was up against books like The Wednesday Warsand Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis(my review here), which I think were so much better.

Also, this morning I woke up from a very vivid dream about two white rats. This book takes the blame for that.