Of late, I've seen a number of books about World War ll. Perhaps it was because 1995 marked the fiftieth year celebration of the end of World War II. Or maybe it's because we, as adults are afraid that in this violence filled society children might forget the importance of peace when the people who experienced the war are no longer here to remind us.
Teaching younger children about war is a tricky thing. You want them to understand the devastation and yet, you don't want to terrify them. Nikolai Popov's wordless picture book WHY? (North-South, $15.95; ages 5 and up) speaks volumes. The initial pictures show a frog peacefully holding a flower. A mouse comes from nowhere and grabs it from him. Larger frogs chase the mouse away. Mice return to attack those frogs in a tank built of an old boot. Escalation and numbers mount until the earth is a blackened terrain littered with bits of war. These animal characters teach a lesson which provides an easy entry to a conversation about how conflict can build if it's not resolved peacefully.
A tongue and cheek lesson about allies comes in Priscilla Turner's The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants (FSG, $15.00; ages 9 and up). The story tells us how vowels and consonants are natural enemies. Vowels are known to consonants as "sly, cunning, two-faced creatures" and the vowels think the consonants are common. They begin a war with taunts, then spears, and catapults, but amid the senseless destruction comes a scrawl that threatens both sides. Neither vowels or consonants can succeed independently and desperation leads to collusion and they spell "STOP" and the scrawl terrified that they'll make sentences, paragraphs, pages and chapters, flees while the letters imagine all the great things they might accomplish together.
Gentle presentation of war can come from a story that touches lightly on the difficulties and finds a resolution that is a tribute to how humanity endures.
Claire Nivola's Elisabeth (FSG, $16.00; ages 6 and up) is a true story of a young girl whose best companion is a large doll who accompanies her everywhere. They share everything, the joy of dance and play and the sadness when Fifi, the dog bites Elisabeth and leaves marks in her doll flesh. One night, this young Jewish girl is forced to flee her home in the middle of the night, leaving everything including her beloved Elisabeth. And when she grows to a woman and her young girl wants a doll "to fill her arms like a real baby." Memories of her own childhood motivate a search where she finds a doll in a cluttered antique store, a doll that looks just like Elisabeth and even has tooth mark of a dog on its arm. The story finds an eloquence in the simplicity of both text and illustrations.
Neil Waldman's The Never-Ending Greenness (Morrow, $16.00; ages 7 and up) describes the reason for the Jewish holiday called Tu b'Shvat. The story begins a man's warm remembrances of his boyhood growing up in the European town of Vilna. What her remembers most are the beautiful trees that line its streets. And then Waldman's illustrations go dark as he describes the hunger and coldness of invasion and the fear of escape where again trees helped to hide the family from the eyes of soldiers. Then we see the boy's new home, Israel. Though the boy's new country is lovely, the land is barren. And so the author tells the story of the reforestation of a country, trees planted by people who loved them and thus began the yearly tree planting celebration of Tu b'Shvat.
Sometimes the complications of war can be explained with a picture book intended for an older audience.
Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story (Lee and Low, $15.95; mature 9 and up) is the third collaboration of writer Ken Mochizuki and illustrator Dom Lee. This true story is told through the eyes of five year old Hiroki Sugihara who wakes one morning to find his house surrounded by Jewish refugees. His father is the 1940's Japanese consul to Lithuania and he finds that men, women and children have come to plead for visas that will allow them to escape Hitler's army. Three times Sugihara's government refuses to allow him to issue visas. Finally with the support of his family, he decides "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't, I will be disobeying God." When you are surrounded by a society whose value system is questioned so often and choices are so confusing, it's helpful to have focus books like this that give models for living and leave lots of room for discussion. Sugihara's humanity lost him favor with the Japanese government, but he saved 10,000 Jews. This is the kind of hard-hitting book that will counteract the numbness that television brings to so many children. It, and other books like it, demands an outloud reading for they will initiate powerful feelings about prejudice and humanness and integrity that need to be part of every child's learning.
Laura Robb, a well-known whole language teacher, collects poems in Music and Drum: Voices of War and Peace, Hope and Dreams (Philomel, $16.95; ages 9 and up). Both organization and poetry choices recommend this book. The poems come from well-known, lesser known, and some of the most powerful come from the child poets who are growing up amidst war. They speak of war's horrors and their own angers and suffering, they write of their dreams of peace, too. Poetic images are well-matched by Debra Lill's amazing photographic illustrations.
Milly Lee's Nim and the War Effort (FSG, $16.00; ages mature 9 and up) tell an American War story. Young Nim, like others in San Francisco's 1943 Chinatown, is gathering paper to help the war effort. Nim is close to winning a school contest for her efforts, but her grandfather tells her she must be home in time for Chinese-school. When a competitor cheats, Nim finds another source and calls on the police for help to tote all these paper stacks to school. Nim, in her innocence and determination to be patriotic has frightened her family and shamed her ancestors. This is a book that needs adult conversation, but is an amazing vehicle to speak about American prejudice against Asians during the war, family honor and traditions.
Haemi Balgassi's Peacebound Trains (Clarion, $14.95; ages 9 and up) tells the story of young Sumi whose father is dead and she misses her mother who is away with the army. Sumi, left with her grandmother Harmuny, is comforted with a family story. Harmuny tells her of the story of the family's flight from Korea in the middle of a freezing cold winter night. How her grandfather put his family on a train bound for peace and went back to fight for the same. A very real story becomes even more poignant with the amazing pictures by Chris Soentpiet.
For young adults who can read an honest retelling, there's Livia Bitton-Jackson's I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust (Simon and Schuster, $17.00; ages 12 and up) Elli Friedmman was thirteen when the Nazis invaded Hungary and she was taken away to Auschwitz. Elli, a talented poet, recalls in horrific details what it was like to be one of the few teenage inmates in this concentration camp. She describes routines, miracles of fate that made for her survival, and how her relationship with her mother changed under the extreme pressures they face together. This is a difficult, but important book because of its honesty and the author's talent to describe with accuracy and emotion.