Frank worries about everything, whereas Stanley seems to breeze through life. They both live on the island of Oahu, where their fathers are serving in the United States Navy at Pearl Harbor. Frank feels lucky that Stanley is on base with him too, since they are the same age and even better, enjoy the same things, like creating comic books. But when Frank reveals how anxious he is to get hurt during a fight, he worries that Stanley will stop being his friend.
What neither boy knows is that the next day, during a visit to one of the large ships that is stationed at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack. The boys are caught, right in all the fighting, and quickly, Stanley, who is half Japanese, is seen by many as the enemy. Will their friendship survive? And more importantly, will they?
Heroes by Alan Gratz is the latest historical fiction book by this power house of an author. This book is only told from Frank’s point of view, yet it gives a realistic view of what Stanley and his family endure during and after the attack.
Recommended for grades 7 and up.
Indian traditions from her mother’s home in India. But Reha feels more American, than Indian most days. Like how can she explain to her mom that she wants to wear jeans to a party, when her mom thinks she should wear a pretty, fancy dress? Plus, it sometimes makes things harder that Reha is an only child and has no one to share her issues with.
After her brother died, it just seemed the right thing to do. For her to join the war effort and do all she could to defeat the Nazis. That is how Lucie finds herself in occupied France, in 1943, pretending to be a French citizen, even though she is an American, and pretending to be 18 years old, when she is only 16. Her parents don’t even know she has decided to join the war. She just left home one day. It isn’t like she left two happy people, because neither of her parents seems very happy, ever since they immigrated from France to the United States.
For Sage, she understands it is bad, that the area around where she lives, is burning. It feels real, and unreal all at the same time. She hears the sirens, she sees the firetrucks and the burned out shells of former homes, but still, she carries on. So does her mom, even though her mom starts talking about moving from the only home Sage has ever known. How can her mom even talk about leaving the house that Sage’s dad grew up in? With her father is gone, the house feels like one solid connection she still has left with him.
Josef, Isabel and Mahmoud all have the same thing in common, even though they are separated by as much as seventy-six years. They are all fleeing their homelands because of awful things that are happening there.
People often underestimate children, or young people in general. Many times they think they are too young to understand something or really get it. Other times, people just ignore them. Well, in Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963, it was the kids that changed the course of history. The kids decided they would do what their parents couldn’t, at least not without a lot of consequences. No one thought that they would arrest the kids, but it turned out, that was almost the best thing. 
Zofia, that almost seems like another new beginning and not in a good way. Once the Gross-Rosen camp is liberated, she now must try to find her younger brother. A brother she keeps seeing for the “last” time over and over again. But after liberation, her mind feels so fragile, as well as her body. She rests for months in a hospital, trying to regain her physical strength and also her mental one. She finds it can be hard to trust what she thinks might be memories, or could they just be wishful thinking?
happen…a lot! So much so, that he finds he could get kicked out of his school and be sent off to another one. One without his friends and well, who really wants to get booted out of their school?
Maria was trying to make it back home after two years away from her family in Poland. But everyone has been displaced by the war. Even though the war appears to be coming to an end, with Germany pulling back and the Soviet Union moving in, there are still old wounds festering under all the interactions with everyone. Even though Maria was taken by the Germans from her home, she now has to navigate through hostile territory – including the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police force), the Polish resistance and the Ukrainian nationalists, or the UPA who want their own country.
country, settle an old score, or simply because they had volunteered, everyone had a story to tell as to how they had gotten to that spot. But what almost all of them could agree on, was how awful everything was turning out.
Books in the Middle: Reading for Middle School 