Ryan Smithson was a typical 16-year-old high-school student until 9/11. “I’d thought about joining the military the moment I saw the towers fall,” he writes in this profoundly moving memoir. Smithson enlisted in the Army Reserve the following year and, a year into the Iraq war, was deployed to an Army engineer unit as a heavy-equipment operator. His poignant, often harrowing account, especially vivid in sensory details, chronicles his experiences in basic training and in Iraq. “Only after we have been completely destroyed can we begin to find ourselves,” Smithson writes of basic training, offering an unflinchingly honest portrait of the physical and psychological brutality of that experience. His account of his tour of duty in Iraq is no less compelling. He lucidly recounts the intensity of battle and the pain of losing comrades. For Smithson, the war is a source of personal enlightenment, and this memoir is a remarkable, deeply penetrating read that will compel teens to reflect on their own thoughts about duty, patriotism and sacrifice. (Memoir. YA)
Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-166468-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
Rita la Fontaine was 12 years old when the Japanese invaded Djambi, Sumatra. To avoid being conscripted as a “comfort woman” for the Japanese troops, Rita became “Rick,” creating a new self. She and her family spent the next three-and-a-half years in prisoner-of-war camps, and no one ever suspected her true identity. She got an office job, became fluent in Japanese and became an interpreter. However, even though her life was relatively privileged, she suffered an attack by a homosexual officer, witnessed horrific starvation and disease in the camps and was tormented by the loss of her mother and separation from her father. Well told in a plain, straightforward prose style, the voice is that of a companionable elder relating her story so that others will know. The text runs long, and the tone is didactic at times, but readers will learn the intended lessons about resolve, courage and perseverance. A solid volume to add to the growing body of fine memoirs about World War II. (glossary) (Nonfiction. YA)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7636-3329-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
Thorough source notes, a lengthy bibliography and a long list of useful websites round out this challenging offering from...
“Race” is a modern invention, but “the urge to hate those who are different” is timeless.
In order to explain why race and racism were invented, Aronson surveys human history and demonstrates how new ethical ideas—the monotheism of the Jews, the democratic ideals of the Greeks, the Protestantism of Martin Luther, among others—became new steps toward the idea of race. The study concludes with race in America, the civil-rights movement presented as “a chapter in the history of the global struggle against racial rankings.” This fascinating, completely absorbing history takes young adults seriously, asking them to make connections, see patterns and question society. Always conscious of the story in history, Aronson ranges far and wide for illustrative examples and analogies—some apt, some over the top, all interesting.
Thorough source notes, a lengthy bibliography and a long list of useful websites round out this challenging offering from one of our finest history writers. M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (2006) is a good match for the second half of this work. (Nonfiction. YA)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-689-86554-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
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