This week’s book talks

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day in the US, but in my heart, it is still Remembrance Day. I’ve been wearing the poppy I knit last year on my school lanyard.

Students had a three-day week, so I only book talked three books, all set during the Great War.

Publisher’s Summary: The Great War is a powerful collection of stories by bestselling authors, each inspired by a different object from the First World War. From a soldier’s writing case to the nose of a Zeppelin bomb, each object illuminates an aspect of life during the war, and each story reminds us of the millions of individual lives that were changed forever by the four years of fighting. This remarkable book is illustrated by the Kate Greenaway Medal-winning Jim Kay. Featuring new work from: ** AL Kennedy ** Tracy Chevalier ** Michael Morpurgo ** David Almond ** Marcus Sedgwick ** Adele Geras ** Ursula Dubosarsky ** John Boyne ** Timothée de Fombelle ** Sheena Wilkinson ** Tanya Lee Stone **

Publisher’s Summary: The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield’s father promised he wouldn’t go away to fight—but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn’t know where his father might be, other than that he’s away on a special, secret mission. Then, while shining shoes at King’s Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father’s name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital close by—a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock. Alfie isn’t sure what shell shock is, but he is determined to rescue his father from this strange, unnerving place. . . .

 

Publisher’s Summary:  The Spanish influenza is devastating the East Coast—but Cleo Berry knows it is a world away from the safety of her home in Portland, Oregon. Then the flu moves into the Pacific Northwest. Schools, churches, and theaters are shut down. The entire city is thrust into survival mode—and into a panic.

Seventeen-year-old Cleo is told to stay put in her quarantined boarding school, but when the Red Cross pleads for volunteers, she cannot ignore the call for help. In the grueling days that follow her headstrong decision, she risks everything for near-strangers. Strangers like Edmund, a handsome medical student. Strangers who could be gone tomorrow. And as the bodies pile up, Cleo can’t help but wonder: when will her own luck run out?

 

Pestilence

At the end of the 15th century, Albrecht Dürer created his third and most famous woodcut in a series of illustrations for The Apocalypse, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It presents a dramatically distilled version of the passage from the Book of Revelation (6:1–8), and shows, from left to right, Death, Famine, War, and Plague (or Pestilence)

Ah, pestilence!

I just finished two books each dealing with a form of pestilence. The first, was Katherine Howe’s Conversion.

People either seem to love or hate this book. I loved it and read it straight through in one day. The girls at St Joan’s School in Danvers, MA are experiencing a mysterious illness. As the affliction spreads, the news media descend and people are looking for explanations and someone, or something, to blame. Howe deftly alternates this story with the story of the Salem witch trials, and weaves in Arthur Miller’s  The Crucible.

A Death-Struck Year, the debut novel of Makiia Lucier, is set in Portland, OR during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

Although it doesn’t have the depth of Cat Winters’  In the Shadow of  Blackbirds, this book is still worth reading. And, Lucier’s website has some very cool resources, including photos and a discussion guide.

While Cleo is staying at a boarding school because her family is out of town, the Spanish flu arrives in Portland. Schools are closed and  Cleo is told to stay until her brother can pick her up. Not wanting to wait, she sneaks out and returns home where she lives alone for the first time ever. She volunteers with the Red Cross, risking everything for strangers.

Both were great reads that I think you will enjoy. I have another one on hold:

I’ll let you know how it goes.