12 World War I Novels and Nonfiction Books I’d Like to Read in 2012

Jan5

War Through the Generations is focusing on World War I this year. Here a few of the books I’d like to read for that project.

Children’s and YA Fiction:
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. “Joey, the farm horse, is sold to the army and sent to the Western front.” I’d like to read the book, then see the movie.
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. “Private Thomas Peaceful lied about his age and left his family behind to fight in the First World War. While standing watch over a battlefield, Thomas spends the night reflecting on his life, aware that the war has changed him forever.”
Without Warning: Ellenâ€™s Story, 1914-1918 by Dennis Hamley. “Ellen Wilkins becomes a nurse to follow her brother to war.”
A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. “In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town.”
Eyes Like Willyâ€™s by Juanita Havill. “A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war.”
The Shell House by Linda Newbery. “Greg explores a ruined English mansion, and meets Faith, a serious young woman who gives him a tour of the grounds. She also tells him about the past inhabitants, whose son disappeared after he returned home from fighting in World War I.”

Adult Fiction:
Strange Meeting by Susan Hill. Reviewed at A Work in Progress. “The trenches of the Western Front are the setting for this story of the extraordinary devotion that develops between silent, morose John Hillard, full of war’s futility, and his as yet unscathed trench mate, David Barton.”
How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston. Reviewed by Dani at A Work in Progress. “When war breaks out in 1914, both Jerry and Alec sign up – yet for quite different reasons. On the fields of Flanders they find themselves standing together, but once again divided: as officer and enlisted man.”
To The Last Man by Jeff Shaara. “Spring 1916: the horror of a stalemate on Europeâ€™s western front. France and Great Britain are on one side of the barbed wire, a fierce German army is on the other. Shaara opens the window onto the otherworldly tableau of trench warfare as seen through the eyes of a typical British soldier who experiences the bizarre and the horribleâ€“a â€œTommyâ€ whose innocent youth is cast into the hell of a terrifying war.”
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. “In summer 1964, a distinguished-looking gentleman in his seventies dismounts on principle from a streetcar that was to carry him from Rome to a distant village, instead accompanying on foot a boy denied a fare. As they walk, he tells the boy the story of his life.”

Nonfiction:
Blood and Iron: Letters from the Western Front by Hugo Montagu Butterworth. “Butterworth was a dedicated and much-loved schoolmaster and a gifted cricketer, who served with distinction as an officer in the Rifle Brigade from the spring of 1915. His letters give us a telling insight into the thoughts and reactions of a highly educated, sensitive and perceptive individual confronted by the horrors of modern warfare.”
Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War by Robert Massie.

With a Name Like Love by Tess Hilmo

Dec25

Somewhere along the way, however, the good reverend decided a small town meant a poor town, and a poor town meant humble people. Ollie’s daddy was born to preach to those people. His daddy had been a traveling preacher, as was his daddy before him, all the way back to the time of Moses. The Good Lord ushered him into that long line of preachers, and then his parents gave him the name Everlasting Love.
It was everything he was.

A children’s novel with a father/preacher character who is not cruel, not confused, not pathetic, and not looney is a rare jewel. I can think of one, off-hand, Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie. Now there’s a second.

And thirteen year old Olivene Love (Ollie), eldest daughter of Reverend Everlasting Love, is a PK who has no problem with being the daughter of a preacher; she just wishes he would settle down and preach in one place. The Love family spends three days holding a revival in one small town before moving on the next one: “[p]reaching, mostly—some singing and an occasional healing if the need arises.” Ollie is ready to stay in one place for a while, make friends, experience indoor plumbing and life in a house rather than a travel trailer.

I loved the characters in this book for middle grade readers. Ollie’s daddy gives her good advice:

“Be careful when you listen to people called they, Olivene. They often tell lies.”

“Some people are broken. They don’t know anything other than hatred. It’s like their heart gets going in the wrong direction early on in life, and they can never quite manage to bring it back around to love. It’s a sad thing and we should have compassion for them. Think of the joy they are missing in life.”

Ollie herself is a good girl, typical oldest child. Reverend Love says to her, “You are an example for your sisters in word and deed. I am blessed to call you mine.” Yet, Ollie isn’t perfect, not too goody-goody; she still gets impatient with her younger sisters, tired of living on the road, and sometimes a little too bossy for her own good. She reminds me of my eldest, whom I am also blessed to call mine.

Ollie’s mama, Susanna Love, is “like living poetry” as she welcomes the people who come to the revival meeting. Her sister, Martha, is the pessimist who’s always counting in her head to see who gets the most privileges or treats, but Martha is also the one who gets things done. Gwen, the third sister, is the spitting image of her father, and she wants to become a preacher just like him. Camille, sister number four, is “simple in mind”, but she almost has the dictionary memorized and has “an air of grace and dignity.” Ellen, the baby of the family, is friendly, a tagalong, and eager to please. Together, the Love family has a character and winsomeness all their own, rivaling other great families of literature such as the the Marches, the Melendys, the Moffats, the Penderwicks, or All-of-a-Kind Family. Actually, they remind me a little bit of the Weems family in Kerry Madden’s series Gentle’s Holler, Louisiana’s Song, and Jessie’s Mountain, maybe because of the time period (1950’s) and because of the way that each of the girls in the family has her own personality and way of coping with life in a preacher’s family.

With a Name Like Love is a good family story with a good plot (I didn’t mention the plot, but there’s a murder to be solved, friendships to resolve, and family decisions to be made) and excellent, heart-grabbing characters. Highly recommended.

What are your favorite families in children’s literature?

For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Dec23

“This book is written as fiction but tells a true story.”

Suzanne David Hall was thirteen years old in 1940 when the Germans invaded France, and she later became a spy for the French resistance. While training to become an opera singer, she relayed messages that helped bring about the Allied invasion of Normandy. The 2003 novel For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is based on interviews with Hall.

The novel is quite exciting, and the tension builds as Suzanne is called on to deliver her messages more and more frequently and as the spy network in which she works becomes smaller and smaller when the Germans capture the spies one by one. Suzanne is a brave girl, and she continues her work even though she knows the Nazis will torture or even kill her if she is found out. The prose in the story is simple and straightforward, and the pacing is mostly good, although the novel does start out a little slowly. The book is halfway through before Suzanne’s spy adventures start.

For Freedom is a good introduction to so many World War II topics: Dunkirk, Vichy France, the French Resistance, German occupation of France, daily life under German occupation, the Allied invasion of Normandy. But it’s not just a nice “salad” accompaniment to the main course of the history of World War II. The story carried me along and made me feel how difficult it must have been to be involved in the Resistance, never knowing from one day to the next whether this day would be the last before you were captured by the Germans.

Isn’t that what courage is? Courage: to keep doing right, to persevere in the face of uncertainty and even valid reasonable fear. If I were doing something that I knew would lead to disaster, if I were certain that I would be caught and killed and unable to complete my mission, it would be foolish and useless to persist. But if it’s only very likely that I might be arrested and if what I was doing was likely to help many people if I could continue, then bravery would be required. Suzanne was a brave young woman, “a hero of France.”

Semicolon’s Twelve Best Adult Novels Read in 2011

Dec20

Gifts of War by Mackenzie Ford. I didn’t review this book right after I read it, and so now it’s hard to go back and write about it in detail. However, it has gotten stuck in my mind. Here’s a review at Shelf Love, and another at Pudgy Penguin Perusals.

The Belfry by May Sinclair. Reviewed at A library is a hospital for the mind. I didn’t get around to reviewing this novel, first published in 1916 and available free in a Kindle edition, but I did enjoy it.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. Semicolon review here.

Annaâ€™s Book by Barbara Vine. Semicolon review here.

The Hardest Thing To Do by Penelope Wilock. Semicolon review here.

Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce.

City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell. Semicolon review here

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Semicolon review here.

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon. Semicolon review here.

Blackout by Connie Willis. Semicolon review and recommendation here.

All Clear by Connie Willis.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith. Semicolon review here.

The first two novels on my list would be excellent choices for the War Through the Generations challenge this year which focuses on the World War I years. My favorites for the year were Connie Willis’s two parter Blackout and All Clear, set during World War II.

Christmas in Washington State, 1927

Dec16

I put up my Christmas tree during the last week of November, just to get the feel and smell of November out of the house. Bob warned me that it would dry out and the needles would fall off before Christmas but I laughed. Not only did I think the drying out improbable but it seemed more likely that it would flourish and give birth to little Christmas trees in the moist atmosphere of the house.

I never tired of admiring and loving our little Christmas trees. When we cleared the back fields, Bob let me keep about ten of the prettiest trees for future Christmas trees. The loveliest of all we sent home to the family but the one I chose for our first Christmas was a dear, fat little lady with her full green skirts hiding her feet and all of her branches tipped with cones.

The Egg and I by Betty Macdonald is a memoir of the years in the late 1920’s that Ms. Macdonald and her first husband, Bob Heskett, spent running a small chicken farm near Chimacum, Washington. The Egg and I was Macdonald’s first book, published in 1945, and she went on to write several more volumes of memoir and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children.

I can see from the book why the divorce ensued. Ms. Macdonald begins her story with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew: “Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband.” Macdonald says she went into marriage with this sort of dutiful attitude, along with adherence to her mother’s advice “that it is a wife’s bounden duty to see that her husband is happy in his work.”

“Too many potentially great men are eating their hearts out in dull jobs because of selfish wives,” quoth Mom, and Betty listened and found herself supporting Bob in his dream of owning a chicken farm. With no electricity. No indoor plumbing. No radio. No telephone. Bats hanging in the cellar and flying into the house. Dropping boards and chicken lice. Days that began at 4 AM and ended at midnight or thereafter. Homicidal chickens. Bears and cougars. Ma and Pa Kettle as neighbors. Babies with “fits”.

And Indians. Ms. Macdonald has been criticized for her attitude toward Native Americans in this book (and perhaps others/), and her blatant prejudice against her Indian neighbors is rather jarring and unpleasant. After describing a horrific Indian social event on the beach that she and her husband attended, a beach party that included domestic violence, drunkenness, child abuse and near-rape, Macdonald says simply, “I didn’t like Indians, and the more I saw of them the more I thought what an excellent thing it was to take that beautiful country away from them.” Had Macdonald been content to say that she didn’t like the Indians she met or that she was appalled by the events at the party, her attitude would have been more understandable. However, to indict an entire group of people for the actions of a few is, well it’s what we nowadays call racism.

Aside from this major flaw, The Egg and I is funny. And Betty Macdonald had a way with words. Some examples, chosen almost at random:

“Farmers’ wives who had the strength, endurance and energy of locomotives and the appetites of dinosaurs were, according to them, so delicate that if you accidentally brushed against them they would turn brown like gardenias.”

“The parlor was clean and neat. . . I was amazed considering the fifteen children and the appearance of the rest of the house. But when I watched Maw come out of the bathroom, firmly shut the door, go over and pull down the fringed shades clear to the bottom, test the bolt on the door that led to the front hallway and finally shut and lock the door after us as we went into the kitchen, I knew. The parlor was never used. It was the clean white handkerchief in the breastpocket of the house.”

“Not me!” I screamed as he told me to put the chokers on the fir trees and to shout directions for the pulling as he drove the team when we cleared out the orchard. “Yes, you! I’m sure you’re not competent but you’re the best help I can get at present,” and Bob laughed callously.

Bob’s attitude in that last quote from the book, repeated frequently throughout, is probably the reason that Betty left him in 1931 and returned to Seattle, civilization, and eventually a new husband, Mr. Macdonald, who presumably appreciated her desire to support him in his work and returned the favor.

Ma and Pa Kettle, a composite picture of Betty’s neighbors on the Olympic Pennisula, went on to fame in several movies and a TV series in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. One of those neighbors, the Bishop family, sued Betty Macdonald and her publisher for subjecting them to ridicule and humiliation as the prototypes for Maw and Paw in her book. The court decided in favor of Macdonald and publisher Lippincott, probably because the Bishops had been appearing on stage as “the Kettles” to profit from their new-found notoriety.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

Dec9

I have a feeling, in light of my North Africa project, that I’m going to be reading several books about the “Lost Boys” Sudan. So basic facts:

“The Lost Boys of Sudan is the name given to the groups of over 20,000 boys of the Nuer and Dinka ethnic groups who were displaced and/or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983â€“2005).” (Wikipedia).

The Second Sudanese Civil War was mostly a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). Around 2 million people have died as a result of the civil war in Sudan, and another 4 million have been driven from their homes by war, famine, and drought. Sudan gained its independence from Great Britain in 1953, but the Sudanese were not prepared for self-government. Southern Sudan was mostly Christian or animist. The people who live in South Sudan are mostly black Africans. South Sudan also has significant oil fields. Northern Sudan, where the center of power was and is, after the British left, is mostly Arab Muslim. The war spread to the western region of Sudan called Darfur because the government was persecuting the people there who were also non-Arabs, although mostly Muslims. South Sudan became an independent state on July 9, 2011. Fighting and famine are ongoing in both Darfur and South Sudan.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park is subtitled “a novel based on a true story.” The true story is that of a Sudanese boy named Salva Dut who in 1985 was forced to flee his village in Southern Sudan. Salva became separated from his family and his fellow villagers, and he went first to Ethiopia, then to Kenya, in search of refuge and reunification with his family and tribe.

There’s a parallel story about a young girl called Nya from a different tribe and village than Salva who spends her days carrying water from a contaminated water hole miles away from her home so that her family can survive and have water. Nya’s story takes place in 2008.

The two stories are told in alternating chapters from the point of view of Nya and then Salva until their stories converge in a surprising manner. I kept wondering throughout the book how the two stories related, and although the denouement was satisfying, I was a bit frustrated by the wait. I’m not sure I would have chosen to tell Nya’s and Salva’s tales in exactly this way, but then I’m not a Newbery award winning author. (Ms. Park won the Newbery for her historical fiction novel, A Single Shard.)

It’s a good story to introduce children to the problems in Sudan and especially the lives of hardship that some children in the world must live. The book is short, 115 pages, and easy to read, but some of the scenes are harrowing and not appropriate for young or sensitive children.

Part of the purpose of Ms. Park’s book is to promote Salva Dut’s nonprofit foundation, Water for South Sudan.

Water for South Sudan from Water for South Sudan on Vimeo.

Christmas in Belgium, Bastogne, 1944

Dec8

From Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the men received General McAuliffe’s Christmas greetings. “What’s merry about all this, you ask?” was the opening line. “Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South, and West. We have identification from four German panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division. . . . The Germans surround us, their radios blare our doom. Their Commmander demanded our surrender in the following impudent arrogance.” (There followed the four paragraph message, “to the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne” from “the German Commander,” demanding an “honorable surrender to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation,” dated December 22.)

McAuliffe’s message continued: “The German Commander received the following reply: ’22 December 1944. To the German Commander: NUTS! The American Commander.’

“We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas. A.C. McAuliffe, Commanding.”

The men at the front were not as upbeat as General McAuliffe. They had cold white beans for their Christmas Eve dinner, while the division staff had a turkey dinner, served on a table with a tablecloth, a small Christmas tree, knives and forks and plates.

On the day after Christmas, Patton’s Third Army broke through the German lines relieving the siege of the American troops at Bastogne.

Christmas in England, 1939

Dec6

George VI, King of England (the one who is featured in the movie The King’s Speech) quoted (the portion in bold print) from the following poem in his Christmas speech to the British nation in December, 1939.

God Knows by Minnie Louise Haskins

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.
God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.
Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

The photo is a 1942 picture of King George VI, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Queen Elizabeth, George’s wife.

1943: Books and Literature

Dec5

French pilot and author Antoine de St. Exupery publishes The Little Prince, the story of a pilot who crashes and meets a little boy from outer space.

Quotes from The Little Prince:
Voici mon secret. Il est trÃ¨s simple: on ne voit bien quâ€™avec le cÅ“ur. Lâ€™essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Les hommes ont oubliÃ© cette vÃ©ritÃ©, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas lâ€™oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisÃ©.
â€œMen have forgotten this truth,â€ said the fox. â€œBut you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.â€

“You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.”

Also in 1943, Oxford scholar C. S. Lewis makes a series of radio broadcasts that will be adapted as a book, Mere Christianity.

Quotes from Mere Christianity:
“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.”

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Also published in 1943:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis.
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Popular in 1943:
The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. One of my favorites. Marcellus is a proud Roman citizen and soldier until he encounters Jesus in Palestine and is forever changed.
Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis. In the summer and fall of 1942, American Marines landed on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal and fought their way across the island. Tregaskis, a journalist, tells the story of Guadalcanal in a primary source account.
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. Two American college age women tell the tale of their 1920 tour of Europe.

Christmas at Home and Abroad, 1943