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A BOY AT WAR

Name: A BOY AT WAR
Author: Harry Mazer
ISBN: 0-689-84161-2

A NOVEL OF PEARL HARBOR

by Harry Mazer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

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In November of 1941, Adam Pelko is in yet another new high school. He’s a military brat; his father is a naval officer recently assigned to the U.S.S. Arizona and stationed in Pearl Harbor. Adam’s father is a spit-and-polish lieutenant who inspects the dust on the shelves and the wrinkles in the sheets in Adam’s bedroom. When Davi Mori, a classmate whose father was born in Japan, invites him to go fishing early Sunday morning, December 7th, Adam disobeys his father. “This is a military family,” his father reminds him, and his son’s friendship with someone Japanese would have a negative influence on the father’s career. Nonetheless, the two boys, along with a Hawaiian classmate, find themselves in a boat, watching in stunned amazement as the Japanese planes bomb and nearly destroy the American fleet. Adam, though slightly wounded, goes to the docks to look for his father. Somewhat improbably, he ends up wearing a navy uniform and carrying a rifle as he helps rescue sailors and guard the road in case of a land invasion. He eventually gets home and waits futilely with his mother and little sister until his father is declared officially missing-in-action and the family is evacuated back to the mainland. This holds the promise of an exciting tale, but Mazer does not fully develop his themes of father-son conflict, and there is a stilted, wooden quality to the writing as he tries to convey the horror and shock of the attack. Graham Salisbury’s Under the Blood Red Sun (1995) is a much more fully developed tale, set in the same locale, and Janet Taylor Lisle’s The Art of Keeping Cool (2000) is a more effective and involving story about boys during WWII. Mazer’s afterword on Pearl Harbor contains information about the Japanese in America at that time, but unfortunately his story does not effectively involve the reader with the requisite emotional intensity or dramatic narrative. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-689-84161-2

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Harry Mazer

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by Harry Mazer

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THE SCHOOL FOR THIEVES

From the School for Thieves series , Vol. 1

by Peter Burns ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 2025

A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series.

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An orphaned street urchin is recruited into an elite school for thieves.

In an alternate world where France is the dominant world power, 13-year-old Tom Morgan has had to scrimp, starve, and steal on the streets of London to survive. Born into a workhouse, he doesn’t know anything about his father, while his mother may have been from North Africa. One thing he does know is the sort of cruelty that awaits the poor who are sent to the workhouse, and he’s determined not to go back. But when their camp is raided and his friends are captured by workhouse agents, the only thing Tom can think of is how to get them out. Enter the Corsair, a cunning and mysterious man with a proposition: He wants to recruit Tom into Beaufort’s School for Deceptive Arts. From nabbing treasures to forging identity papers, Beaufort’s promises to teach Tom everything he needs to know to become a Shadow Thief and a member of the Shadow League, the secret global organization that helps keep the world’s political power in balance. But Beaufort’s has its own rules and secrets, and if Tom is to survive long enough to help his friends, he’ll need to figure them out quickly. Clever and gripping, this fast-paced boarding school story will appeal to fans of the Mysterious Benedict Society and Spy School series.

A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series. (Adventure. 10-14)