The Girls of Atomic City

By Denise Kiernan

Novel based on true events that happened during WWII. This novels tells the untold story of girls/women who worked in Oak Ridge Tennessee during the war. Oak Ridge was nothing but farmland when the US government stepped in and bought up about 60,000 acres of land to build a city and a series of buildings that would support The Manhattan Project. The city of 75,000 practically grew up overnight as they hired African Americans to build cookie cutter dorms and houses, as scientists built the production site, and as young women were hired to monitor dials and switches for ten hours a day. Since the US had still not recovered from the depression the 75 cents an hour wage was very enticing to young girls who otherwise would have stayed in the homes and become homemakers. What was a shock was that the girls and the whole town had no idea what they were producing–they were told it was their duty to support the war effort and not ask questions or share what they were doing. They were to tell no one–or immediate dismissal. It was brainwashing at its finest but the girls did not really mind because entering the workforce was very exciting to them and in some ways changed the role of women for ever (along with Rosie Riveters of WWII). The only people who knew truly that the atomic bomb was being produced and what it is was capable of were the scientists. Follow the story of CeCe, a sharecropper’s daughter who wanted to find a “rich” soldier, Shirley, a black activist, and June Walker, a simple, shy, naive farmer’s daughter who really didn’t know what she wanted out of life–or what life outside the farm had to offer her.

This book highlights the inequality of women and people of color while engaging the reader in one moment in time when the US was in the race, with Germany, to make a bomb to end war. I did enjoy the content of the book but I just felt the author left a lot of loose ends regarding the inequality issues that she brought forth in this book. Now I am going to try the Atomic City Girls! I love reading novels from this time period.

Wish

By Barbara O’Connor

MacMillan Publishing Group, 2016.

Grades 4-7

This was a lovely story. Charlie Reese and her older sister live with her mom while dad is prison. Mom is not mentally healthy from the descriptions that Charlie gives. All indications are that she is bipolar. A lot of lows where she can’t get of bed, go to work or care for her girls to manic highs. Social services steps in,when Charlie repeatedly gets in fights at school and finds that she is neglected at home. Charlie is shipped off to live with an Aunt (her mom’s sister) Bertha and Uncle Gus that she has never met while her sister, just a couple of months shy of graduation, gets to stay with a friend in town.

Charlie is very angry that she has been shipped off to live with “hillbilly” relatives while her sister remains behind. Bertha and Gus never had children, are really kind and accepting of Charlie but she really doesn’t know how to act so she continues to finds ways to make her daily wishes and be most disagreeable. She has made the same wish for the last ten years.–without fail. She knows if she misses a day her wish will never come true. So she looks for a shooting star, or a lost penny, a four leaf clover just to make sure she will someday get her wish.

Charlie is angry with the world and then enters Howard who gets made of fun in school of the time because of his limp and a stray dog that keeps coming around the house. As Howard and Charlie find ways to capture that dog something happens to Charlie–self discovery. Through true friendship, real family love and the unconditional love of the captive stray, now named Wishbone, Charlie starts to make a new wish. A very heartwarming story that you won’t want to miss.

Out of My Heart

By Sharon Draper

We met Melody in Draper’s first book, Out of My Mind. She is now 12 (a year older) and much more confident in expressing herself now that she has her medi-talker. You see Melody has cerebral palsy and she has been non-verbal most of her life and confined to a wheelchair as she has no real control over her legs or her arms,. Everyone presumed she was “mentally challenged” in the first book until she got her medi-talker and then we find she is very smart and has a photographic memory.

Melody’s confidence now supports her need for independence. She looked online for camps for kids with disabilities and she wants to go even though she depends on others to meet all her needs–dressing, eating, toileting, and safety. Her parents don’t think she is ready to go all by herself–but Melody is insistent so, off to summer camp she goes. Camp is very exciting and scary at the same time but travel along as Melody tries zip-lining, swimming and horseback riding–with only one real mishap.

Heartwarming story for those who enjoyed the first book.

Area 51 Interns: Alien Summer

Alright the first fun read of the summer 2022! This book is a fantasy with quirky characters and is just a lot of fun! First day of summer break and it is “take your child to work day”–soooo boring right? Well Viv the brainy nerd, her Australian, geeky friend Charlotte along with the charming and cute Elijah and the gas passing dorky Ray all end up at Area 51 for a day with their parents. The snoozefest begins when suddenly alarms start going off everywhere and the aliens have escaped and captured all of the adults. Now it is up to the kids to save the day. This is the first in a series by James S. Murray and Carsen Smith. Great for grades 4 and 5.

Signs of Survival

Signs of Survival is a memoir of sisters Renee and Herta. They lived in Czechoslovakia in the 1940’s when Hitler’s Nazi Army invaded. Herta and both of her parents were deaf and so Renee became the eyes and ears of the family. Being Jewish meant living in constant fear–when the Nazi’s got close their parents sent them to live/hide on a rural farm. All was well until the payments stopped and the family put Renee and Herta on the streets. It is at this point that the parents were transported to Auschwiiz. No family, no money so they gave themselves up to the Nazi’s in hopes they might be reunited with their family–but they were sent to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. The horrors the two girls witnessed is beyond belief and still haunts them today. This book originally was an audio recount of their lives and now has been put into print. This dark point in history will leave its mark on everyone who reads this book, with the hope that history does not continue to repeat itself.

Ground Zero: A Novel of 9/11

By Alan Gratz

New York: Scholastic Press, 2021

Grades: 6 and up Genre: Historical Fiction (to most of targeted audience)

If you lived through 9/11 this book brings back vivid memories and emotions. If you are reading it as historical fiction you will come to appreciate the magnitude of that dark day in American history. Gratz is a master of telling two separate stories and then entwine them to make one! This book is told in alternating chapters of Brandon and Reshmina. Brandon is on a one-day suspension from school and since his dad does not want him home alone he takes him to work at the Windows on the World a restaurant on the 106 and 107 floors in the North tower of the World Trade Center (Building One). Brandon sneaks out from the restaurant around 8:45 in the hopes of getting to the underground mall, making a purchase (to make restitution of an items that got broke in the prior days fight) and get back before his dad noticed he was even gone. But once on the elevator a plane hits the tower and sets off a series of emotional escapes and events as Brandon tries to first save his only remaining parent, his dad, and then to save himself.

Reshmina’s story take place 18 years later in Afghanistan, where she and her twin brother are trying to help support their family in a country that has only seen war during Reshmina’s lifetime. Taliban and American soldiers have torn their country and families apart. Tired of doing nothing her twin, Pasoon goes off to join the Taliban thus destroying the family which has fought hard to stay together and stay alive. During a raid of Reshmina’s town an American soldier is seriously wounded and in need of care. Because of the code Pashtunwali the family felt the duty to care for anyone who asks for help. This sets off a chain of events that endangers her entire community. But, here we learn about war devastation and the searching for the reasons for why there is war in Afghanistan.

Then these two stories then become one!

This story will break your heart as details of 9/11 unfold. This story will educate you about the role of women in the middle east, about the Taliban, about the America’s desire for retaliation and about the changes that have come about in Afghanistan and at Ground Zero since the day that changed the world forever, September 11, 2001.

Welcome to the New World

By Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan

Genre: Graphic Novel–Realistic Fiction

No part of this story is easy. Syria is in the midst of a civil war and the Aldabaan Family feared for their lives. So, they make the decision to leave and come to America, but they must leave some family behind. They come to a country that is totally foreign to them—it is cold, they get bullied, discriminated against and even over time they get death threats because they are Muslim. Now they are wondering why they left. I am glad to hear the story of heroes that come in and help this family—no easy task to help them overcome so many obstacles. I felt the struggle and it pulled at my heartstrings, but I found the story somewhat choppy and disjointed. Then the story just kind of ends —no conclusion and no real resolution. But still this book is a good example of the fear, distress, distrust and agony that families undergo when they choose to come to the United States.

Flamer

By Mike Curato

Why can’t I just be me? Why does everyone pick on me–Asian, overweight, feminine features, not sporty–I just want to be me, Aiden Navarro. Aiden is off to summer scout camp before his first year in high school.

He has hopes of making friends, fitting in and belonging but summer camp although devastating at times becomes in the end a time of self-discovery.

This is a raw and gritty story about the effects of bullying, about choices and even one of friendship. Throughout the story I just wanted a friend, a confidant for Aiden–someone to say it’s okay to be you and I will stick up for you!

Author Jarrett J. Krosoczka (“Hey Kiddo”) says, “This book will save lives.” I agree and it is okay to be you and you are enough!

Genre: Graphic Novel–Realistic Fiction
Grade: 9 and Up language, content, suicide, bullying

The Enigma Game

The Enigma Game

By Elizabeth Wein

Hyperion, 2020.

Pages: 434 Genre: Historical Fiction Grades: 8 and Up

Author, Elizabeth Wein, is a master World War II story teller. She always has diverse characters and weaves historical facts flawlessly into her stories. In The Enigma Game, 15 year old Louisa, of Jamaican descendant, has lived her life in london with her parents. By the year 1940, both parents have died in the war leaving her on her own and wanting to do something to help fight the Nazi Germans. She takes a job caring for an elderly woman, Jane, who is going to make her final residence in Scotland with her niece at the local pub–her secret is that she is German born. The pub is just off a RAF base where all the servicemen frequent. During their stay a German pilot mysteriously lands on the base and hides a secret code machine. Louisa uncovers the machine and she and Jane with the help on a RAF pilot uncover codes that help to bomb the Germans but the Germans are on to them and the drama unfolds. Wein does a great job intertwining discrimination into several of her characters that fit the time frame which adds depth to the story. Really enjoyed the book!

Butterfly Yellow

By Thanhha Lai

Published: 2019

Pages: 284

Grades: YA 9 and Up

This is a story of a Vietnam refugee from 1981 escaping Vietnam 6 years after the war ended. Hang needs to go find her baby brother she accidentally gave up. Operation baby lift was for orphans of the war–Hang thought she could escape Vietnam with her baby brother through this airlift. But when it was their turn, official only accepted small children and Linh was taken and sent to America. Now Hang has to tell her family what happened–and the family, under communist rule, tries to save money to go rescue Linh. It took 6 years to raise that kind of money. Even then, it is by fishing boat not by plane.

This journey is the part of the book that makes this story YA. It is the horrific flashback stories of crossing from Vietnam to Thailand –the pirates who took everything from them; even their dignity and left many refugees sink to the bottom of the sea.

This story begins when Hang arrives in Texas in search of her baby brother (not such a baby any more), meets an unlikely cowboy, LeeRoy and struggles with filling David’s memory (Linh) of his family and culture.

I loved listening to the audio book. I may not have enjoyed the book in print as much because at times the story with all it’s flashbacks and Hang’s struggle with the English language gets a might confusing. Listening, it was a beautiful story of family, kindness of friends and culture that had been uprooted by war.