I cheered the
day my son failed his Air Force medical.
So what if his engineering degree would have been fee-free? He would
have been sent to fight and possibly die in a futile war. I preferred him ill than dead.
I’m
currently reading Elizabeth Wein’s Rose
Under Fire (Electric Monkey), a story about a young ATA pilot in World War
11. For me, Wein’s Code Name Verity ranks with Markus Zusak’s Book Thief as one of the most moving books I’ve ever read.
With
Remembrance Day looming, I thought readers might be interested in some books
that refute the propaganda that war is glorious and honourable.
In Kerry
Greenwood’s Evan’s Gallipoli (Allen
& Unwin) a 14 year old faces many dangers (and the ineptitude of the Allied
military leaders) after following a mentally ill father behind enemy lines. On
the journey to freedom, Evan finds ransacked villages, displaced people and
learns that places such as Thrace, Bulgaria and Greece suffer because of the
war. The Turks
(and the reader) struggle to understand why Australians invaded their home to
fight a German enemy.
Davide Cali
and Serge Bloch’s The Enemy (Wilkins
Farago) and Joy Cowley’s The Duck in the
Gun (Rigby) are anti-war picture books with a simple yet powerful message.
In Flanders Field by Norman Jorgensen and
Tasmanian based illustrator Brian Harrison-Lever (Simply Read Books) (sadly out
of print), shows us a small act of humanity contrasting with the carnage and
devastation of war.
Billy Mack’s War by James Roy (UQP) tells the
trauma of a returned soldier, a victim of the Burma Railway.
Suzanne
Collins’ (of Hunger Games fame) Year of the Jungle: Memories from the Home
Front (Scholastic) is based on her own struggles as a young child when her
father was fighting in Vietnam.
Of course,
these books and many others such as Morris Gleitzman’s Once, Then, Now and After
quartet (Penguin) and Ruta Sepetys’ Betweeen
Shades of Gray show there is love and hope in the midst of despair. Maybe
if our children and their children read books like these, we might be less
likely to start another war.
Nella Pickup
One would would hope for children "less likely to start a war". On the other hand, children eventually need to know too, that if there is nothing worth dying for, in the end, there is nothing worth living for. Many things we cherish like our freedoms were purchased at great cost by people who believed that. Something to celebrate.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog Nella. I want to read all of these.
ReplyDelete