Category: War

BORN 0N THE FOURTH OF JULY

Forty years ago Ron Kovic’s memoir, Born on the Fourth of July, was released and soon sold over one million copies.   The movie version, co-written with Oliver Stone and starring Tom Cruise as Kovic, was the 1989 Academy Award-winning film.…

Review: Pax by Sara Pennypacker

The Fox felt the car slow before the boy did, as he felt everything first. So begins Sara Pennypacker’s middle grade novel Pax (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, February 2016), a book about many things, including the effects of war. Not some…

Child Soldier

There is an ironic page in Child Soldier showing the narrator/protagonist, Michel Chikwanine, riding his Canadian school bus, living in two worlds at one time. The students around him are complaining about things privileged Western kids complain about: parents, phones,…

Review: Listen, Slowly by Thanhhà Lai

With her first novel for young readers (Inside Out and Back Again, HarperCollins 2011), Thanhhà Lai captured in verse one child’s experience adjusting to life in Alabama after leaving Vietnam. In Listen, Slowly, Lai explores the experience of Mai (Mia at…