An Interview with

SIGNAL Journal The Journal of the International Reading Association’s Special Interest Group – Network on Adolescent Literature Volume XXXIV

No.

Fall 2010/Winter 2011

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Life During Wartime: YAL that Depicts Conflict 1

Calls for Manuscripts

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Words from the Editors

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Using YAL to Teach Sympathy and Social Change: War in Iraq/Afghanistan Jacob Stratman

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Picturing a Life: Lessons and Landscapes of an Iranian Girlhood Elaine J. O'Quinn

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The American Adolescent Historical War Novel: Johnny Tremain, Rifles for Watie, Across Five Aprils, and My Brother Sam is Dead as Exemplars Steven T. Bickmore

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War in YAL: Interview with Jen Bryant Shanetia P. Clark and Matthew G. Skillen

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Combat Ready: Teaching Young Adult and Classic Literature about War Donna L. Pasternak

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Purchasing Wisdom from Pain Donna L. Miller

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Investigating the Iraq War through Multiple Texts Deanna Day

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The Potential Power of Less Appealing Appeals: Drawing from Cultural Context in Response to School Censors Wendy J. Glenn

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The Effects of War on Adolescents: An Interview with Ruta Sepetys Jennifer S. Dail

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YA Book Reviews Carol Harrell, Editor SIGNAL Journal

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Combat Ready: Teaching Young Adult and Classic Literature about War by Donna L. Pasternak “Most teachers are not critical thinkers because they have not been asked to think critically. They readily accept the propaganda put forth by their professional associations and professors, and then they pass much of it along to their students. How can we help those training teachers to teach to become critical thinkers?” – Nel Noddings 2006

el Noddings‟ assertion that most teachers (and many of the students they will come to teach) have not been educated to be critical thinkers is disturbing on many levels. In the context of this paper, this comment is particularly unsettling because much about literature, young adult or otherwise, can be revealed through the study of its war stories, a genre that generally challenges the reader to examine unreliable, adolescent narrators, the stories they tell and the relationships they form with other characters. According to Frederick R. Karl (1983), “The war/combat novel becomes for the American novelist a sociopolitical fiction; for at their most incisive, such novels reflect the culture. Even more, they demonstrate continuity with traditional American themes, mirroring not only contemporary culture but the American past” (p. 93). Through the study of war stories, readers come to learn much about the development and appreciation of literature in regards to literary innovation, stylistic experimentation and recurrent themes as presented through the cultural and political arena of war (Jason & Graves, 2001). Stories about conflict, from Beowulf and the Odyssey to Meg Rosoff‟s How I Live Now or Markus Zusak‟s The Book Thief to Deborah Ellis‟ The Breadwinner, explore the moral and ethical implications of war and its impact on the environment, medicine, immigration, technology,

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and the global communities it decimates. A book as popular as Suzanne Collins‟ The Hunger Games or as complicated as Melinda Marcetta‟s Jellicoe Road ask readers to step back and consider “What is war?” Many young adult and classic literature texts about war are valued by younger readers, because these books are provocative in their examination of identity, drug and alcohol abuse, and relationships (Johannessen as referenced in Nilsen & Donelson, 2009). In many of these stories, writers explore who goes to war and when, what constitutes loyalty and patriotism, and whose rules combatants and civilians live by and value (Nilsen & Donelson, 2009; Bond, 2010; Gopalakrishnan, 2011). Therefore, Noddings‟ allegation about teachers not being a particularly critical group makes me ask if we are doing students a disservice by including complex war stories in our curriculums without helping readers decipher what it means to “go to war.” Teaching texts such as Khaled Hosseini‟s The Kite Runner or Sharon E. McKay‟s Thunder over Kandahar or Ishmael Beah‟s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider demand that I ask and find the answer to the question, “How do I help readers understand the complexities of war stories and how do I prepare teacher candidates to teach what it means „to go to war‟?” Through my years of sharing war literature with secondary school and higher education students, I have learned that English teachers often teach complex texts about conflict despite not having had an opportunity to critically discuss them in the safe confines of an English studies classroom where their ideas and thoughts about texts are valued. This has been my educational experience and the educational experience of No. 1


35 many of the preservice teachers looking to certify to teach high school with whom I work. Gerald Graff (2003) notes that: “English majors are generally asked to read and comment on literary works but are rarely expected to enter the conversation of critics [...]. These expectations infantilize undergraduates, who are supposed to produce [emphasis his] criticism without reading (271).” Consequently, many of the future and inservice teachers teaching texts at the secondary level have merely jotted down notes about what it means “to go to war” according to someone else. I learned that if students in my classes were to become critical thinkers I could not replicate this practice and needed to move past it – but this is not where I started out, as many new teachers do. As a newly minted Ph.D. with a dissertation in the participant literature of the Vietnam era conflict, I was eager to share what I had learned about the complexities of war literature. The first time I taught works about the American War in Vietnam like Philip Caputo‟s A Rumor of War, Tim O‟Brien‟s The Things They Carried, or Charles Coe‟s Young Man in Vietnam, I discovered that students justified the atrocities against the Vietnamese populace described in many of these stories as deserving characters identified as the enemy. I thought war stories were much more complex than my students did (Pasternak, 1998; Pasternak, 2000). As I included more and more war literature in my curriculum, I chose books that asked my students to investigate why participant war writers would create reprehensible characters committing atrocities. I thought students would want to explore, through multiple perspectives (Gaughan, 2001; Soter et al, 2008; Appleman, 2009), characters whose moral centers shifted during their war activity and why that had happened. Unfortunately, as time went on, our discourse merely revealed that my students sympathized with many of the hatred-ridden narrators. I learned that many of the students studying with me could not move past the underlying reasons for the characters‟ moral shifts. In reading war stories with me, students saw American soldiers abused by a corrupt government and war machine – essentially, victims with guns, a compelling idea that I SIGNAL Journal

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thought begged analysis. The more I pressed the students to engage the texts critically, through a series of questions about why self-identified participant writers would create characters like these, the more the students wanted to name their family members who had served in Vietnam. The more I directed the students to remove themselves from what they knew about family members who went to war or the popular-cultureinfused perceptions of the Vietnam conflict they learned in the movie theater, the more the students became entrenched in their own views that these flawed characters‟ perceptions were the right perceptions and ignored the complexity of the narrative. The more I pushed the students to examine the texts, the more they became combative. While I was learning much about reading critically, my students were not learning very much about the complexity of war literature. Studying, writing about, and teaching texts authored by participant war writers from the Vietnam War era like Michael Herr (Dispatches), Larry Heinemann (Close Quarters), Robert Stone (Dog Soldiers), or Tim O‟Brien (Going After Cacciato or In the Lake of the Woods) underscored for me that the English Language Arts classrooms I experienced were not conducive to sharing ideas that could generate responses for emotional, psychological, political, cultural, racial, and social reasons. I came to recognize that I needed teaching methods that allowed for the deep analysis of these texts, methods that helped the discussants “read” the text despite their political, social, historical, racial, psychological, emotional, or cultural perspectives. By changing to constructivist practices (Dewey, 1938; Vygotsky, 1962; Golub, 2000), group and hands-on activities (Mitchell & Christenbury, 2000), and writing intensivecritical inquiry (Murray, 1998), I learned how to support students to negotiate difficult conversations about war literature. By my stepping aside from the desk in the front of the room (Atwell, 1998) the students in my classes soon found the space to negotiate the entanglements of not only complex texts but also ideas in those texts they saw encroaching on their own lives (Pasternak, 2003), skills needed now more than ever in light of America‟s presence in No. 1


36 conflicts around the globe. Thus, as part of the methods and adolescent literature classes I teach, teacher candidates are given the space to talk and write through anxiety-producing concepts (Applebee, 1996; hooks, 2003) which support their development as smart educators as opposed to submissive teachers (Giroux, 1988) – teachers critical enough to please Noddings, I would think. In teaching literature about war, I learned that only through participating in discordant discourse can new and future teachers learn for themselves how to conduct, perpetuate and invite new thinkers into a critical conversation – no matter how bad or shallow that debate might start (Pasternak & Scott, 2007).i By participating in methods that model and dissect student-student conversations, teacher candidates experience critical dialogue that will help them teach complex literature, such as the literature about war – highlighting Judith Langer‟s point that “being literate involves much more than just the ability to decode and encode written language; it involves ways of thinking – ways of literate thinking [. . .] – that shape the sense that will be made of text and of the world” (As quoted in Applebee, 1996). Preparation in negotiating the politics of choosing complex texts about war and exploring methods that support opinions that clash will create critical teachers, who in turn will create critical thinkers. Being Critical: A Place to Start A description of some of the activities I employ to help readers think more critically about war literature, activities that ease them into looking at a war text through multiple perspectives, may make concrete how I support students to engage in critical conversations. Before I assign the reading of a war text in my methods or adolescent literature classes, the students complete an anticipation guide or “opinionnaire” I adapted from Larry Johannessen‟s book Illumination Rounds: Teaching the Literature of the Vietnam War (1992). The opinionnaire (see Appendix B) asks the students to agree or disagree with broad generalizations, slogans, clichéd statements, or famous quotes about war taken from popular culture and classic literature. Once the students SIGNAL Journal

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have completed their opinionnaires, they turn to another student in the room and compare their responses. Many find they have similar ideas, many do not. Students then come together for full-class discussion. It is at this time that students negotiate their opinions in light of what other members of the class think. Often someone points out how a particular statement contradicts another statement in the opinionnaire, simplifies a complex notion or ideal, is propagandistic, or objectifies certain groups. A statement like “It is never right to kill another person” often brings up a complicated discussion of the difference between murder and combat. Students examine when soldiers should be prosecuted for killing during a war. They have asked, “When is killing murder as opposed to self-defense?” and many have had to readjust their thinking when they talk about a combatant as a terrorist or as a defender of one‟s home. Additionally, a statement like “If it weren‟t for the media, people in the United States would not know the truth about their wars” generates a discussion of when it is ethical to report on troop movement or release sensitive information, such as an organization like Wikileaks.org has decided to do now or Daniels Ellsberg did during Vietnam. Another statement on the opinionnaire that sparks considerable discussion is “Women have very little to do with war; they do not fight and suffer very little,” a provocative assertion in light of the conflicts waged in Iraq and Afghanistan and how enemy lines have been blurred, if not altogether obliterated, for women soldiers who are supposed to be noncombatants. This statement also brings up discussions of rape being used as a weapon of war in the Congo and Sudan, to name two places in which Amnesty International has identified this practice as common. Students retake the opinionnaire after full-class discussion and assess why their opinions might or might not have changed – often struggling with ideas they have easily accepted earlier. Recently, a student, after completing the opinionnaire mentioned how little war has affected her life and wondered why she had been spared, sparking a discussion of which people go to war in the United States.

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37 While the students complete their opinionnaires individually, before the discussions start, I instruct them to write on the board a fact about war that they heard or know. I ask for facts that are general to all wars, especially if the text we are reading is science fiction or fantasy, or specific to an era. Sometimes, after the full-class discussion and retaking the opinionnaire, I move the students‟ attention to the wall of facts expanding on the board. They examine each entry and explore what they know about war. Some of the “facts” are immediately eliminated based on the opinionnaire discussion; some “facts” are confirmed as truth. Both this discussion and the one generated from the opinionnaire broaden or constrict what the students thought they knew about war. Thus, when a student writes on the board “Soldiers are respected by their government,” it has stirred us to examine veteran‟s benefits and salaries for enlisted personnel. Over the years, quite a few of the preservice teachers in my young adult literature classes were veterans of the Gulf War and had stories to share about respect for soldiers and their medical and educational benefits. Historically, a common fact shared on the wall is that Vietnam veterans were mistreated by civilians upon their return to the United States. A claim disputed in Vietnam War studies as an urban myth (Lembcke, 1998; Franklin, 2000), the students talk about how the image of the Vietnam veteran being spat upon has come to complicate how civilians talk about their opposition to war(s). Some other “facts” shared on the wall include “Soldiers are heroes” and the “United States protects our rights through war,” two simplistic ideas that bring about discussions about what is heroic and whose rights are being protected when examined in court cases since 9/11. A side benefit to conversations generated through the opinionnaire and the wall of facts activities is that these discussions tease out many of the themes and plot devices prevalent in war literature. The wall of facts often produces a fact that combat training solidifies warriors into loyal, cohesive groups, although, as the students will learn as they read, many war stories deal specifically with alienation and identity loss like Bobbie Ann Mason‟s In Country or Collier and SIGNAL Journal

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Collier‟s My Brother Sam Is Dead or Jerry Spinelli‟s Milkweed. The statements on the opinionnaire generally point to war stories being rites of passage stories – trials that test men and women in complex ways not learned elsewhere, oftentimes at the loss of one‟s morality and spirituality. Additionally, the opinionnaire underscores how ironic oversimplified ideas about going to war can be as the students negotiate their beliefs. Depending on the work being read, I sometimes save the wall of facts for later on – especially if we will be reading an historical war story – like Stephen Crane‟s Red Badge of Courage, Dalton Trumbo‟s Johnny Got His Gun, Mal Peet‟s Tamar, or even Walter Dean Myers‟ Sunrise over Fallujah or Fallen Angels. Once the students have read to a certain point in any of those texts, we may return to the wall of facts to explore their accuracy. At other times, after moving from the wall of facts activity, I provide the students with a short text that will help them situate their thinking about war. For this I use Kylene Beers‟ (2003) template for “Probable Passage” (p. 323), a graphic organizer originally designed to encourage reluctant readers “to make predictions, to activate their prior knowledge about a topic, to see casual relationships, to make inferences, and to form images about a text” (p. 87). Beers (2003) explains, Probable Passage is a brief summary of a text from which key words have been omitted. The teacher chooses these key words and presents them to the students. After discussing what the words mean, students arrange them in categories according to their probable functions in the story (such as setting, characters, conflicts, solutions, or endings), then use them to fill in the blanks of the Probable Passage. As students work through this process, they use what they know about story structure, think about vocabulary, look for casual relationships, and predict what they think will happen (p. 87). “Probable Passage” is an educational tool that supports readers to process the steps needed to read more effectively – a device I find helpful no matter how sophisticated the reader might be. This activity also creates anticipation about the No. 1


38 text by activating students‟ prior knowledge to make predictions about material they have yet to read. One short text I have used in my adolescent literature class to foreground what it means to go to war is Christian Bauman‟s “Letter to a Young Enlistee” from the book War Is . . .: Soldiers, Survivors, and Storytellers Talk about War (2009), because of its use of presumed audience. I provide the students with a list of words from the text that they define and write in boxes on the worksheet categorized as “characters,” “setting,” “conflict,” “resolution.” Once all the words have been classified into the spaces labeled on the worksheet, the students write a “gist” or thesis statement about the work in the space provided. They then compile a list of questions or “gaps” they may have about the text – this will often include uncertainties if a word should be classified under “setting” or “conflict.” The words I have included in the past come straight from the text and are not necessarily words I want students to study as vocabulary: advice, validate, ghosts, 9/11, paratrooper, freedom, etc. After completing the worksheet, the students share their gist statements and compare their predictions and questions with at least one other person in the class. Then, they revise and/or respond to their gist statements and predictions dependent on their conversations. Mostly, at this stage, their gist statements predict that the essay is a patriotic response to 9/11, and they settle in to read the selection silently and revise their responses on the “Probable Passage” handout. Once everyone has finished reading “Letter to a Young Enlistee,” we discuss Bauman‟s work and their earlier responses and new responses to it, participating in a process that has them examine multiple perspectives critically. Past conversations about Bauman‟s essay have focused on the words they were to categorize in the “Probable Passage,” and how these words changed context depending on how students categorized them. Thus, since one of the words was “advice,” students have presumed in their gist statements that the advice Bauman would provide would be gentle and supportive – definitely not the tone or message they found upon reading the essay. Although students are aware they are reading a young adult text, they SIGNAL Journal

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express that Bauman‟s use of presumed audience is a bit off-putting. This observation leads to a conversation about how adolescents talk to each other and the language they choose – especially when discussing the decision “to go to war.” They ask, “Would I take Bauman‟s advice as it is offered in this essay or does he mean to be ironic?” An observation that returns them to their initial presumption that advice about going to war would be sympathetic and supportive. Bauman‟s essay may not have been predictable to them but going through this process does engage them and has them read more critically to close their gap questions. Young Adult and Classic Literature about War: A Critical Conversation In all of these activities, students have negotiated and renegotiated what they know about war – often mentioning that “going to war” is more than just soldiers with guns on battlefields but now includes terrorists, home defenders and civilian combatants engaged in complex struggles with society and the environment. We talk about how students‟ opinions might have changed or had been confirmed by what they read, what they discussed, and what they learned from the multiple perspectives engaged during a class period – and they become aware of how examining multiple perspectives enrich and complicate their understandings of a topic they once thought as simplistic as “War is hell.” I find these activities work for preservice teachers as well as secondary school students, because by asking all students to participate in them they can now recognize how their own opposing views and perspectives change in light of new knowledge. These activities make concrete how critical thinking occurs. By starting to teach war literature this way, the students recognize that the entanglements of war are complex and enemy is created through the depersonalization and dehumanization of collective groups. Before they begin to read a narrator‟s war story, they have chatted about glory and death to better consider the perspective being presented and they are more prepared to judge whether or not the narrator will be reliable. Students have examined what is fact and how No. 1


39 those facts reflect national traditions and establish popular myths. Because students have participated in these activities and they have activated and corrected their prior knowledge, their voices dominate this conversation leading to much less combative discourse as they reexamine their beliefs in this process. In addition to the war stories already mentioned, young adult stories about conflict can range from Irene Hunt‟s Across Five Aprils to Anne Frank‟s Diary of a Young Girl to Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston‟s Farewell to Manzanar to Art Spiegelman‟s Maus. Young adult literature about war can be post-apocalyptic like Orson Scott Card‟s Ender’s Game to collections of children‟s voices like Deborah Ellis‟ Off to War. Whether the work is a combat narrative, like Tim O‟Brien‟s If I Die in a Combat Zone; an exploration of the war at home, like Lois Lowry‟s Number the Stars; an examination of terrorism, like Deborah Ellis‟ The Breadwinner; or the impact of war on refugees and children, like Ken Mochizuki‟s Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story; these texts ask readers to critically analyze what it means to make sense of a senseless experience: war. Despite the genre and subject variety evident in war stories, the one characteristic they have in common is that they ask readers, young and otherwise, to consider difficult, complex ideas that affect people from all walks of life. War stories force readers to empathize and sympathize with combatants and victims at the same time they push readers to hate and dehumanize the concept of enemy. There is much to learn from reading and studying texts together about war but first we have to find a way to share our ideas about them. References Applebee, A. N. (1996). Curriculum as conversation: Transforming traditions of teaching and learning. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. Appleman, D. (2009). Critical encounters in high school English: Teaching literary theory to adolescents. 2nd ed. NY: Teachers College Press. Atwell, N. (1998). In the middle: New understandings about writing, reading, and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. SIGNAL Journal

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Beers, K. (2003). When kids can't read what teachers can do: A guide for teachers 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinneman. Bond, Ernest. (2010). Literature and the young adult reader. Boston: Pearson. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta PI\i. Franklin, H.B. (2000). Vietnam & other American fantasies. Amherst, MA: U of MA P. Gaughan, J. (2001). Reinventing English: Teaching in the contact zone. Portsmouth, NH: Heinneman. Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey P., Inc. Golub, J. (2000). Making learning happen: Strategies for an interactive classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gopalakrishnan, A. (2011). Multicultural children's literature: A critical issues approach. Los Angeles: Sage. Graff, G. (2003). Conflict clarifies: A response. Pedagogy, 3 (1), 266-276. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community. NY: Routledge. Jason, P.K. & Graves, M.A. (2001). Introduction. Encyclopedia of American war literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ix-xiv. Johannessen, L. (1992). Illumination rounds: Teaching the literature of the Vietnam war. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Karl, F. R. (1983). American fictions 1940-1980. New York: Harper & Row, Inc. Lembcke, J. (1998). The spitting image: Myth, memory, and the legacy of Vietnam. NY: New York University Press. Mitchell, D. & Christenbury, D. M. (2000). Both art and craft: Teaching ideas that spark learning. Urbana, IL: NCTE. Murray, D. M. (1998). Write to learn. 6th ed. NY: Harcourt, Brace College Publishers, 1998., NY: Harcourt, Brace College Publishers. Nilsen, A. P. & Donelson, K.L. (2009) Literature for young adults. 8th ed. Boston: Pearson. Noddings, N. (2006). Critical lessons: What our schools should teach. NY: Cambridge University Press.

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40 Pasternak, D.L. (1998). Keeping the dead alive: Revising the past in Tim O'Brien's war Stories. Irish Journal of American Studies, 7, 41-54. Pasternak, D.L. (2003). Learning tolerant practice in Applachia. MLA's Profession , 94-104. Pasternak, D.L (2000). Vietnam War landscape: California in Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers. California History, 79 (1), 24-29. Pasternak, D.L. & Scott, T. (2007, February). Quality teachers, critical teachers: Engaging the profession. English Leadership Quarterly , 2-6. Pratt, M.L. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession 91. NY: MLA, 33-40. Soter, A.O., Faust, M., & Rogers, T. Eds. (2008). Interpretive play: Using critical perspectives to teach young adult literature. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc. Tompkins, J. & Simmons, M. (1999). "Teaching from the heart: A Dialogue on Principles."

National Council of Teachers of English College Section Summer Institute for Teachers of English: Counterpoints/ Counterparts: Integrating Reading, Writing, Literature and Teaching. Myrtle Beach, SC. 6-9 June 1999. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ______________________________________ Donna L. Pasternak is Associate Professor of English Education and directs the Early Adolescence through Adolescence English Education program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She co-directs the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project. Her research and teaching interests include the teaching of literature and writing, the use of technology in the English Studies classroom, critical inquiry and teacher development, and adolescent literature. She can be reached at [email protected].

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Even in light of cultural sensitivity, I think expressing differing opinions can be polite and still produce effective opposing views. Disparate opinions do not have to deteriorate to ad hominem argument. If we help and support students to understand that people work out ideas aloud, perhaps they will see it as a fun way to negotiate and renegotiate meaning. Jane Tompkins (1999) investigates this notion in much of her work, and her concerns about educating the “whole” student is an argument that must also be considered when placing students in the contact zone, the space that Mary Louis Pratt (1991) calls the place for authentic conversation “the contact zone . . . [the place] where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of power” (p. 34).

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41 APPENDIX A Referenced Young Adult and Classic Literature About War Aronson, Marc & Patty Campbell. (2009). War Is . . . Soldiers, Survivors, and Storytellers Talk about War. Candlewick. 12 & up. Various genres. Collection of essays, blogs, interviews, articles, song lyrics, & short stories from people who have been involved in war. Beah, Ishmael. (2007). A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 14 & up. Nonfiction (Memoir). Beah recounts his life as a 12-year-old soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Caputo, Philip. (1977). A Rumor of War. Ballantine. 15 & up. Nonfiction (Memoir). Caputo describes his experience as a Marine in Vietnam that led to his being charged with murder. Card, Orson Scott. (1985). Ender’s Game. Tor. 10 & up. Fiction (Science). Adolescent genius, Ender Wiggins, plays games in preparation of protecting the human race against aliens. Coe, Charles. (1968). Young Man in Vietnam. Scholastic. 12 & up. Nonfiction (Memoir). Young marine lieutenant Charles Coe shares events and experiences from his tour of duty in Vietnam before he was wounded and sent back to the United States. Collier, James Lincoln and Christopher Collier. (1974). My Brother Sam Is Dead. Scholastic. Fiction. 10 & up. Tim Meeker is divided in his loyalties as his family is torn apart during the Revolutionary War. Collins, Suzanne. (2010). The Hunger Games. Scholastic. 12 & up. Fiction (Science). In the future, 16-year-old Katniss must participate in war games to represent her district and protect her family. Crane, Stephen. (1895). Red Badge of Courage. Simon & Schuster. 12 & up. Fiction. Union soldier, Henry Fleming, responds to the boredom, violence and confusion of the Civil War. Ellis, Deborah. (2008) Off to War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children. Groundwood. 10 & up. Nonfiction. Collection of interviews with the children of Canadian and American soldiers deployed or recently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ellis, Deborah. (2001). The Breadwinner. Groundwood. 9 & up. Fiction. 9-year-old Parvana lives a secluded life since the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan. Frank, Anne. (1947, 1956, 1980). The Diary of a Young Girl. Bantam. 12 & up. Nonfiction (Journal). 13-year-old Anne Frank records her experiences hiding with her family from the Nazis during WWII. Heinemann, Larry. (1986). Close Quarters. Penguin. 16 & up. Fiction. Philip Dosier, a recent high school graduate, is confused and corrupted by the immorality he encounters while serving in Vietnam. Herr, Michael. (1977). Dispatches. Knopf. 16 & up. Nonfiction (Memoir). Journalist Michael Herr relates his experiences in Vietnam in a collage of narratives. Hosseini, Khaled. (2004). The Kite Runner. Riverhead. 15 & up. Fiction. Amir returns to war torn Afghanistan from life in the United States after the Taliban murder his childhood friend, Hassan. Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki & James D. Houston. (1993). Farewell to Manzanar. Houghton. 9 & up. Nonfiction (Biography). At 7-years-old, Jeanne Wakatsuki and her family relocate to Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp in California during WWII. Hunt, Irene. (1965). Across Five Aprils. Follet. 10 & up. Fiction. The Civil War affects Terry Bregy‟s Illinois farm family. Lowry, Lois. (1989). Number the Stars. Houghton. 9 & up. 10-year-old Annemarie Johannesen‟s family rescues the Rosens, a Jewish family and friends to Annemarie, in Nazi occupied Denmark during WWII.

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42 Marcetta, Melinda. (2010). Jellicoe Road. HarperTeen. 14 & up. Fiction. 17-year-old Australian, Taylor Markham, leads her school in the annual war against the townies and cadets. Mason, Bobbie Ann. (1985). In Country. Harper & Row. 14 & up. Fiction. 17-year-old Sam Hughes is obsessed with learning about her father, a soldier who died in Vietnam before she was born, in an attempt to understand the effect the war has had on her family. McKay, Sharon. E. (2010). Thunder Over Kandahar. Annick. 12 & up. 14-year old Yasmine‟s family moves from England to Afghanistan where she befriends 14-year-old Tamanna, who faces an arranged marriage, and learns how the Taliban has targeted her Westernized family. Mochizuki, Ken. (2003). Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story. 4 & up. Nonfiction (Biography). Japanese consul in Lithuania during WWII saves the lives of hundreds of Polish Jewish refugees. Myers, Walter Dean. (1988). Fallen Angels. Scholastic. 12 & up. Fiction. 17-year-old Richie Perry leaves Harlem and enlists in the Army to serve in Vietnam during the summer of love. Myers, Walter Dean. (2009). Sunrise Over Fallujah. Scholastic. 12 & up. Fiction. After 9/11, Robin Perry leaves Harlem to enlist in the army and serve in Iraq during the early days of the war. O‟Brien, Tim. (1978). Going After Cacciato. Dell. 16 & up. Fiction. While serving in Vietnam, Paul Berlin struggles between deserting from the army and upholding his moral commitment to his squad and his family back home. O‟Brien, Tim. (1979). If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Send Me Home. Dell. 15 & up. Nonfiction (Memoir). O‟Brien submits to community pressure and serves in Vietnam instead of going AWOL. O‟Brien, Tim. (1994). In the Lake of the Woods. Houghton Mifflin. 16 & up. Fiction. John Wade is determined to hide secrets about his military service in Vietnam during his political campaign. O‟Brien, Tim. (1990). The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin. 14 & up. Fiction. A collection of stories that blend fact and fiction about a fictionalized character named Tim O‟Brien. Examines how O‟Brien and his squad wrestle with the reality of living through and after the American War in Vietnam. Peet, Mal. (2008). Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion & Betrayal. Candlewick. 13 & up. Fiction. 15-year-old British girl, Tamar, explores her grandfather‟s past fighting the Nazis in Holland during WWII. Rosoff, Meg. (2006). How I Live Now. Random House. 12 & up. Fiction. 15- year- old American Daisy is caught up in England when it is attacked by an unnamed enemy. Spiegelman, Art. (1986). Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. Pantheon. 12 & up. Graphic/Biography. In graphic format, Art Spiegelman tells his father Vladek‟s story surviving the Holocaust. Spinelli, Jerry. (2003). Milkweed. Knopf. 11 & up. Fiction. Too young to know his name and age, the narrator steals to survive on the streets of Warsaw during WWII. Stone, Robert. (1987). Dog Soldiers. Penguin. 16 & up. Attempting to make a big drug deal, journalist John Converse returns to California from Vietnam. Trumbo, Dalton. (1939). Johnny Got His Gun. Bantam. 14 & up. Fiction. Joe, a WWI enlistee, loses his arms, legs, mouth, eyes and nose from a shelling. Zusak, Markus. (2005). The Book Thief. Knofp. 13 & up. Fiction. Death narrates the story of nine-year-old Liesel Meminger during WWII in Germany.

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43 APPENDIX B War Opinionnaire Working individually, mark each statement “agree” or “disagree.” After debriefing, first with at least one other student in class, then with the full class, reread each of the statements below and see if your opinion has changed. Consider why that might or might not be. Agree

Disagree

Agree

Disagree

1. “The only heroes in war are the dead ones.” 2. “My country right or wrong” is not just a slogan – it is every citizen‟s patriotic duty. 3. No cause, political or otherwise, is worth dying for. 4. United States soldiers participate in acts of brutality and torture. 5. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” 6. It is never right to kill another person. 7. Soldiers are patriotic. 8. Women have very little to do with war; they do not fight and suffer very little. 9. War movies accurately detail the lives of combatants. 10. “The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” 11. Wars in the late 20th and 21st centuries are guerrilla wars; therefore, it is understandable that civilians suffer as a result of U.S. military actions. 12. People should never compromise their ideals or beliefs. 13. For soldiers who serve[d] in Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq, the difference between death and survival often means not worrying about potential harm to innocent civilians or doing the right or moral thing. 14. When veterans return from war, people in the United States treat them as returning heroes. 15. It is more courageous to avoid military service at all costs then to serve in a war you oppose. 16. If it weren‟t for the media, people in the United States would not know the truth about their wars. Adapted from: Johannessen, Larry R. Illumination Rounds: Teaching the Literature of the Vietnam War (Theory and Research into Practice). Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1992.

SIGNAL Journal

Vol. 34

No. 1
