Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Don't You Know There's a War On?

By Avi

It's World War II and Howard Crispers is eleven years old and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He and his best friend Denny both have fathers off serving in the war, so naturally the two boys are very caught up in all the drama of that time. They believe their public school principal is a German spy.
One day, Howard is late getting off to school and he sees the principal on the street. Normally, the principal is the first one to arrive at school in the morning and so seeing him sets off all Howard's alarm bells and he follows the man to see where he is going. He ends up eavesdropping on a conversation between the man and an unknown woman. To his consternation, he hears that his very own teacher is slated to be fired, for reasons unknown.
Thus begins Howard's and Denny's campaign to save their teacher from losing her job, against the background of the United States in the depth of World War II.

This was a pretty good story, even though it is intended for children. The end of the story is very much like that of real life endings, bittersweet.

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