Pearl Harbor & WWII

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Home : 2002 : March : 20

Pearl Harbor & WWII
By Lori 2

Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury focuses on how the attack affects two young boys on the island, one a Japanese-American. It has some really great opportunities for discussion.

There are several good books on
the Japanese-American internments during this time. One non-fiction is Jerry Stanley's I Am An American. Others include Farewell to Manzaner (?spelling - I am doing this from memory and that doesn't look quite right), The Eternal Spring of Mr. Ito (Canada also held citizens of Japanese descent in internment camps), Journey to Topaz and Journey Home by Yoshiko Uchida are a few titles dealing

with this subject.

Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff deals with the war from the homefront.

You might also do a comparison and contrast of the events at Pearl with the September 11 attacks and how they galvanized the nation.

Behind the Bedroom Wall deals with the Nazi youth movement and how so many of the German youth were falsely led by the German government. In this book a young girl is a member of the Nazi youth movement while her parents are part of the resistance hiding Jews in their home.

The Hidden Children by Howard Greenfield talks about many of the Jewish children hidden during the war. I don't think you can ever look at WWII without looking at the Holocaust. Patricia Polacco's The Butterfly is a great picture book addressing the topic and works for this age level. I use it with I Never Saw Another Butterfly -- a book of poetry and drawings by children held in the Terzin concentration camp -- only a few of the prisoners held at this camp survived the war.

Another interesting aspect of the war that has recently received some attention is the role played by the Navajo code talkers. The code used by the Americans during the war was unbreakable -- based upon the Navajo language. It might make for a interesting topic to research -- several of the codetalkers recently received recognition for their service by President Bush.

There are several other avenues that would be interesting to explore in a long unit on WWII.