Milton Meltzer

Young Adult Fiction--McEwan to Newton

McEwan, Ian.  Rose Blanche (Red Fox, 2004).

During World War II, a young German schoolgirl, Rose Blanche, follows the soldiers when they arrest a boy and discovers a concentration camp in the woods. Thereafter , she takes food to the prisoners until the town is liberated. Ironically, when she travels to the camp on that day she is shot by the soldiers. The oppression of Fascism is shown through the powerful and realistic paintings. In Innocenti's large, meticulously detailed paintings, Rose Blanche is the only brightly colored individual, and her small figure is set against the drab colors of overwhelming buildings and masses of soldiers and townspeople. No skyline is shown until a radiant spring bursts forth at the site of her death after the liberation. Although the story is simply told, it will require interpretation as details such as the concentration camp are not named nor explained, and the death of Rose Blanche is implied but not stated. This is a difficult book to classify, as the text is easy enough for a young child to read alone, and it has the appearance of a picture bookbut the content of the text and illustrations is full of emotional impact and subtlety.  (Lorraine Douglas, Winnipeg Public Library, Manitoba, Canada for School Library Journal)

 

McGowen, Tom.  Lonely Eagles and Buffalo Soldiers: African Americans in World War II (Franklin Watts, 1995).

Comprehensive overview of African American military participation in World War II.  For students in upper elementary school.  Includes very good photographs.

 

McMahon, Thomas.  Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry (University of Chicago Press, 2003).

What was life like for the scientists working at Los Alamos? Thomas McMahon imagines this life through the wide eyes of young Tim McLaurin, the thirteen-year-old son of an MIT physicist who, inspired by a young woman named Maryann, worked on the project. Filled with the sensuous excitement of scientific discovery and the outrageous behavior of people pushed beyond their limits, Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry is a beautifully written coming-of-age story that explores the mysterious connection between love and work, inspiration and history. 

 

Meltzer, Milton.  Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust (HarperTrophy, Reprint edition, 1991).

Six million—a number impossible to visualize. Six million Jews were killed in Europe between the years 1933 and 1945.  What can that number mean to us today?  We can that number mean to us today?  We are told never to forget the Holocaust, but how can we remember something so incomprehensible?  We can think, not of the numbers, the statistics, but of the people. For the families torn apart, watching mothers, fathers, children disappear or be slaughtered, the numbers were agonizingly comprehensible. One. Two. Three.  Often more. Here are the stories of those people, recorded in letters and diaries, and in the memories of those who survived. Seen through their eyes, the horror becomes real. We cannot deny it--and we can never forget. 

 

Meyers, Walter Dean.  The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins (Scholastic, 1999).

A seventeen-year-old soldier from central Virginia records his experiences in a journal as his regiment takes part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and subsequent battles to liberate France.

 

Millman, Isaac.  Hidden Child (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

Isaac was seven when the Germans invaded France and his life changed forever. First his father was taken away, and then, two years later, Isaac and his mother were arrested. Hoping to save Isaac’s life, his mother bribed a guard to take him to safety at a nearby hospital, where he and many other children pretended to be sick, with help from the doctors and nurses. But this proved a temporary haven. As Isaac was shuttled from city to countryside, experiencing the kindness of strangers, and sometimes their cruelty, he had to shed his Jewish identity to become Jean Devolder. But he never forgot who he really was, and he held on to the hope that after the war he would be reunited with his parents. After more than fifty years of keeping his story to himself, Isaac Millman has broken his silence to tell it in spare prose, vivid composite paintings, and family photos that survived the war.

 

Morpurgo, Michael.  Waiting for Anya (Mammoth, 2001).

Like the acclaimed Number the Stars, this well-plotted novel features a young Gentile hero battling the Germans in their war against the Jews. As it opens, Jo is guarding the sheep when his dog alerts him to a bear; Jo warns the villagers in his small French town and they kill the hapless beast. The theme here prefigures the more tragic hunt for human prey, while the bear chase itself brings Jo into contact with Benjamin, the reclusive Widow Horcada's Jewish son-in-law, who is hiding in her mountain home. Separated from Anya, his daughter, Benjamin hides other Jewish children and leads them to safety in nearby Spain. Jo is soon enlisted, bringing supplies to the widow's house. Then the Germans encamp in Jo's village, observing everyone and sealing the Spanish border. Jo's concern for the Jews is measured against his reluctant awareness that the German occupiers are not uniformly evil--in fact, the villagers' relations with the Germans form the most distinctive element of the story. Although some key elements are historically improbable (chiefly, a German officer's partial rejection of Nazi principles), the adventure of the Jews' escape into Spain is both gripping and temperate. (Publisher’s Weekly)

 

Mowat, Farley.  And No Birds Sang (Stackpole Books, 2004).

In July 1942, Farley Mowat was an eager young infantryman bound for Europe and impatient for combat. This powerful, true account of the action he saw, fighting desperately to push the Nazis out of Italy, evokes the terrible reality of war with an honesty and clarity fiction can only imitate. In scene after unforgettable scene, he describes the agony and antic humor of the soldier's existence: the tedium of camp life, the savagery of the front, and the camaraderie shared by those who have been bloodied in battle.

 

Nelson, Pete.  Left for Dead: A Young Man's Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, Reprint edition, 2003)

Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The ship sank in 14 minutes. More than 1,000 men were thrown into shark-infested waters. Those who survived the fiery sinking—some injured, many without life jackets—struggled to stay afloat in shark-infested waters as they waited for rescue. But the United States Navy did not even know they were missing. The Navy needed a scapegoat for this disaster. So it court-martialed the captain for “hazarding” his ship. The survivors of the Indianapolis knew that their captain was not to blame. For 50 years they worked to clear his name, even after his untimely death. But the navy would not budge—until an 11-year-old boy named Hunter Scott entered the picture. His history fair project on the Indianapolis soon became a crusade to restore the captain’s good name and the honor of the men who served under him.

 

Newton, William.  Two-Pound Tram (Bloombury Publishing, 2003).

The year was 1937, and Hitler had just walked into Austria. It was also a marvelous year for clouded yellow butterflies. Wilfred and Duncan live in a big old house in Sussex, England. They spend their days catching butterflies and dreaming of escape, and only ever see their parents on Wednesdays for lunch. When their mother elopes and their already distant father takes up with other ladies, they decide that enough is enough. And they have a plan: they will leave home, go to London, and buy a tram, decommissioned by the bus and tram company, that they have seen advertised in the paper for two pounds sterling. Soon the brothers find that their adventures have begun in earnest-as they become proprietors of an old-fashioned horse-drawn tram service, then local celebrities whose tram advertises for a seaside merchant, and finally such heroes of the war effort that they receive a visit from royalty.

 

Further Reading

Bibliography


Astley, Neil, edited by. (2002). Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times. New York: Miramax books/Hyperion. "An Atlas of the Difficult World," by Adrienne Rich., p. 321 (there are many other poems in this collection appropriate for this lesson)

Goldman, Paula, editor. (2006). Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women. International Museum of Women in association with Novato, CA: New World Library. "If Women Ran Hip Hop," by Aya De León, p. 197; "Willing to Fight," by Ani DiFranco, p.206.

Meltzer, Milton, compiled by. (2003). Hour of Freedom: American History in Poetry. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press. "I Hear America Singing," by Walt Whitman, p. 27; "I, Too," by Langston Hughes, p. 45.

Murray, Joan, edited by. (2001). Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. "America," by Claude McKay, p. 30

Nye, Naomi Shihab, selected by. (2004). Is This Forever, Or What: Poems and Painting from Texas. New York: Greenwillow Books. "an excerpt from Con Flama: A Performance Piece," by Sharon Bridgforth, p. 43.

*Nye, Naomi Shihab. (1995). Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Portland, OR: Eighth Mountain Press. "Blood," p. 121.

Panzer, Norma, edited by.(1994). Celebrate America in Poetry and Art. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. New York: Hyperion. "To Live in the Borderlands Means You," by Gloria Anzaldúa. p. 65. (this book also showcases the Whitman and Hughes poems above on pp.58 & 59 and has many poems that fit beautifully into this lesson.)

Sewell, Marilyn, editor. (1996). Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Woman's Poetry. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. "Can't Tell," by Nelly Wong, p. 276.


Recommended for In-class Use


Blum, Joshua; Holman, Bob, Pellington, Mark. (1996). The United States of Poetry. New York: Harry N. Abrams. A compendium that features "America singing," based on Walt Whitman's famous poem of the same title. The introduction to this useful book reads, "…In the waning days of the Second Millennium, in a time of madness and plague, it is extraordinary and heartening to begin to hear, through the noise of rhetoric-by-committee and the purpose of language-is-to-sell-something, the reemergence of the singular voice of the poem. Poetry, until recently considered an art all but extinct, is being reborn. No longer necessarily thought of as the dense and impenetrable domain of the elite, poetry is reentering our culture as something as familiar as a schoolyard rhyme, as exciting as the discovery that love can mean the same thing as two people. ….This is the first book of poems ever to be based on a television series." The book has a strong focus on Rap and Spoken Word. This is a singular and unique collection with which to tap into poetry and populism, and is highly recommended for this lesson!

"Let America Be America Again," by Langston Hughes in Forché, Carolyn, editor. (1993). Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. New York: W.W. Norton.

Selections including "manifestos," from Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. (newest ed. 2007). Poetry As Insurgent Art. New York: New Directions Books.

Gillian, Maria G. and Gillian, Jennifer, editors. (1994). Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry. New York, Penguin.

Partridge, Elizabeth. (2002). This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie. New York: Viking.

Reed, Ishmael, editor. (2003). From Totems to Hip Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.

 

Overview of Poetry & Populism

Because they are so diverse, poets from different backgrounds, walks of life, ethnic and cultural roots and traditions show us many different kinds of people living different kinds of lives even as we share the same country, city, or locale. Within each locale there seems to be a boundary set for the rich and the privileged and a boundary around places for the poor, the down-trodden, and the disenfranchised. There are voices throughout our American literature and poetry that are justifiably angry at many persistent and stunning breaches of equality and there are voices that praise our people and our democracy. Our poetic voices show us over and over that America is a different country for different groups of people, from Walt Whitman's praise and celebration of American workers in his poem, I Hear America Singing, to black American poet Langston Hughes' poem, I, Too, in which he picks up on Whitman's theme but laments living in an America where he is not accepted as an equal because of racial prejudice. The poetic and artistic tradition in American has and continues to reflect both a sprit of faith in our country's highest ideals and an immense sense of having been betrayed by its failure to stand up for them. The poet speaks for the people sometimes with a call to action, sometimes with a fierce critique of who we have become as a culture inundated with profit and consumption of goods, sometimes as a keeper of sorrow and loss, and other times as a spokesperson for our highest dreams and our greatest capacity for good.  

One of the most important American poets, recognized for speaking for the people is Walt Whitman. Whitman was born in 1819 in New York. By the age of twelve he fell in love with the written word and for years to follow became a self educated scholar, reader, and lover of language. After working as a printer and a teacher in a one room school house, Whitman turned to Journalism. In 1848 he left a newspaper in Brooklyn, New York to become an editor of a paper in New Orleans. It was there that Whitman encountered first- hand the cruelties and viciousness of slavery. In the fall of 1848, Whitman returned to Brooklyn and began to work in earnest on developing his unique style of poetry that astonished the great thinkers of his time with its strong social commentary and groundbreaking voice that spoke to the plight of the suffering of others and the injustices visited upon them, especially by slavery.

During the civil war, Whitman worked in hospitals with the sick and war-wounded. Though overcome with the suffering brought on by the war, Whitman continued his groundbreaking populist poetry thereby establishing a tradition that has been kept vibrant and alive ever since. 



Though our time to learn about the tradition of the Poet Populist in America is limited, it is important to note that music is interwoven into social activism and is in fact inseparable from learning about poetry and populism. From Woody Guthrie (left) the great American troubadour who in his lifetime (1912-1967) wrote over 3,000 songs and accompanying himself on his guitar, traveled throughout America singing of what he saw—the breadlines of the Depression, migrant workers pouring out of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, unions fighting for decent working conditions and fair wages—to Rap music and Hop Hop, music has been a part of populist endeavors for social change. Just as Walt Whitman and Woody Guthrie, two of our most treasured populists, always spoke for the common people, today poets, spoken word performers, rappers, and hip hop groups continue this rich legacy. You might be interested to know that two prime examples of the strong ties between poetry and populism, music, and spoken word are performers Gil Scott Heron and Mos Def Smith. Gil Scott Heron, born in 1949, became well known in the seventies with his ability to put his outrage over the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and his anguish about the civil rights struggle into passionate spoken word poetry. (You can find the text for his famous piece The Revolution Will Not Be Televised in the book The United States of Poetry or on the web). Mos Def Smith is regarded as one of hip-hop's most introspective and insightful artists who is carrying the tradition of bringing songs and poetry that protest problems perceived in society into public space. In addition to performing, Mos Def was producer and musical director for the well known HBO series, the "Def Poetry Jam." Songs and poems that speak out against racism, wealth, power and privilege, xenophobia, war, environmental destruction, and corrupt politics are part of the legacy of this longstanding American populist tradition.
 


Springboards for Lesson Two: Selected Quotes To Generate Class Discussion


“Poetry is a place where all the fundamental questions are asked about the human condition.”
                             Charles Simic, born in Serbia, 1938, U.S. citizen and noted poet

 

“Poetry can tell us what human beings are. It can tell us why we stumble and fall and how, miraculously, we can stand up.”
                              Maya Angelou, born in 1928, widely acclaimed African American poet

 

“Whatever the war, poets did their share of the fighting. Some, however, joined with other citizens—conscientious objectors—to protest war and uphold their conviction that peaceful solutions to conflicts between or within nations are possible. Whatever choices poets made—to fight or to resist war—their experiences are reflected in their poems.”
                              Milton Meltzer, from Hour of Freedom: American History in Poetry