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A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor Review

A Boy at War: Best Story Ever told

Do you love books about history? If you do, A Boy at War by Harry Mazer is the story for you. This is a story that will keep you interested until the end. This story will give you a more up-close experience of the destruction of Pearl Harbor. This book will keep you wanting to see what happens on the next page.

A Boy at War is a story of a high school student named Adam. His father is in Navy and is the captain of the most powerful ship in Hawaii, the Arizona. The main part of the story is that his father is called for patrol on his ship. While this is going on, Adam and his two friends trespass illegally into military personnel only Pearl Harbor and go fishing on Pearl Harbor. Then the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Adam sees his father's ship jump out of the water and explode in flames and sinks. Him and his friends are still alive but barely. Adam had a fifty caliber scrape his back. His friends are okay but, one of them had a migraine and the other a splinter the size of a pencil through him close to his heart. Adam can still walk so, he takes his friends and puts them inside a nurse's car going to the hospital to be taken care of. This story will take you on a true adventure on what happened that day.

I can only tell you what I loved most about the book. My favorite part was when Adam was left all alone with some of the Navy doing their best to rescue any survivors. He is all stranded and this Marine General goes to him and says, " You are a Marine now sailor, come with me." He is given a Springfield rifle, boots, a marine uniform, and the order to kill any Japanese soldiers on sight including the bombers and airplanes. He is ordered to guard this gate from Japanese troops, but all he wants to do is get to his home and see his mother and little sister. He meets this person with a jeep who has authority to enter in and out of the gate. Adam asks and the driver says yes. He gets on and makes it through the gate with no problem. I can not tell you the ending but all I can tell you is, the ending will leave you with a million thoughts racing through your brain.

Will Adam and his family finally meet again? Or will he have to live with someone else? Is his father still alive? Or did he perish on his ship the Arizona? Will everything go back to normal? Or will Adam be scarred for life of what he saw? Will Adam and his family stay in Hawaii? Or will they leave and go to the other part of U.S.? If you are not afraid of some violence or misery I recommend you read A Boy at War and find out yourself.

A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor Feature

ISBN13: 9780689841606
Condition: New
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A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor Overview

December 7, 1941: A morning like any other, but the events of this day would leave no one untouched.

For Adam, living near Honolulu, this Sunday morning is one he has been looking forward to -- fishing with friends, away from the ever-watchful eyes of his father, a navy lieutenant. Then, right before his eyes, Adam watches Japanese planes fly overhead and attack the U.S. Navy. All he can think is that it's just like in the movies. But as he sees his father's ship, the Arizona, sink beneath the water, he realizes this isn't make-believe. It's real.

Over the next few days, Adam searches for answers -- about his friends, the war, and especially, his father. But Adam soon learns sometimes there are no answers.

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Customer Reviews

A high school boy witnesses the destruction of his father's ship during the Pearl Harbor attack. - Regis Schilken - Bethel Park, Pennsylvania
A Boy at War is the story of young Adam who attends high school in Honolulu. Early on a Sunday morning, he, Martin and Davi, a Japanese American, pedal along a highway to Pearl Harbor where they plan to fish. Leaving their bikes, they take their fishing poles and walk along the shore. Almost hidden by bushes, a small rowboat sits anchored.

Although the boys had come to fish, the temptation to "borrow" the rowboat for joy-rowing in deeper water near the big ships is far too strong. Within moments, the three youths are out into the harbor's open water.

With beaming pride, Adam points out his father's battleship, the Arizona. These huge ships have always fascinated him because of their majestic yet monstrous size. As large as the Arizona appears, still it floats gracefully and with ease as if it were simply a sleeping immovable giant. Since it is dawn, Adam knows his father is aboard that very battleship saluting with his men as they raise the American flag to prepare for the days activities which will probably be light for a Navy Sunday.

In the distance, the mounting whine of small planes approaching grabs all three boys' attention. For several moments, they think the aerial formation is some kind of a salute or a military exercise or clandestine war game; maybe it is some movie company shooting a new motion picture. Watching from the seats in their boat, they hear--blasts--explosions; the loud unmistakable--concussive roar--of bombs exploding.

In shock, they watch plane after plane drop its load of bombs on American warships sitting like lame ducks. Some of the vessels explode amidships and burst into balls of flame. Adam and his two friends witness nearby ship parts flying in all directions. Some of the wreckage lands dangerously close to them. In ghastly horror, they recognize some of the debris landing--bloody bodies and body parts of dead sailors.

While Adam stares at the Arizona, as if lifted by a mighty volcanic eruption, the entire ship explodes upward at first and then plows heavily downward into harbor waters in a hellish inferno of fire and smoke, split asunder. All too rapidly, it sends out a tsunami which tosses the boys and their boat upward out of the water and their small craft. As Adam surfaces gasping for air, he watches the conflagration all around him; he notices a--pit, pit, pit--of tiny pellets hitting the water and their small rowboat.

The noise comes from a Zero fighter plane firing shells directly at him and his pals. He ducks underwater. but when he surfaces, he looks toward the Arizona, the once mighty battleship is almost gone from view. It has not rolled over; it has not gone end-up. Gutted, it is rapidly sinking to Pearl Harbor's bottom.

Can Adam save his two buddies, one of whom has "a splinter the size of a pencil sticking out of his chest?" And how must he deal with his deep feelings toward Davi, a Japanese American? Did his father survive the sinking of the Arizona? And what about his family back in the city? Did they survive.

These unanswered questions I will leave for the reader of this short, but gripping, easy-to-read book. A Boy at Waris the perfect short story for high school youngsters. As a former educator, I confess it is often difficult to get some high school boys to read. This book will surely grab the aggressive interest of young males, particularly those who might be slower readers or who claim "I hate to read."

I am guessing that the reading level of A Boy at War is around 4.5 to 5th grade. I would recommend this book, followed by Heroes Don't Run by the same author, to prove to adolescents that reading can be exciting, interesting, and an engrossing way to spend fun time, rather than wasting it manipulating video games. Surely, video war games might be physically active but eventually they become repetitious--even boring until a better game comes out. But once a youth is hooked on reading for pleasure, uncountable volumes of fascinating mentally active thrillers await him in both book and e-book format.

Other interesting reads:
Heroes Don't Run: A Novel of the Pacific War
Soldier X
You Know When
At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor
The Oculi Incident
Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial: A Pictorial History

War hurts - Book reviewed by Dan - Mid-Praire Teen -
Living in Hawaii sounds fun. Unless you're 14-year-old Adam, who moves all over the U.S. because of his father, being in the military. In the first few weeks of school, Adam meets a Japanese friend - and his father fears the anti-Japanese sentiment on the island will damage his family and his fathers navy career. So, his father forbids Adam from seeing or hanging out with him. Later on, Adam, his friend, and another classmate plan to go out fishing on the morning of Sunday, December 7th, 1954. In this gripping novel, Harry Mazer makes you feel as if you could have been there with Adam and his friends in the boat, and feeling what they felt. This ALAN Award winning author helps bring WWII to the couch, the car, or wherever you may be reading. My favorite part about it was that Mazer brought history back in a exciting, authentic way. He made me feel what the soldiers had inside their heads; Despair, excitement, and anger. This book also portrays Adam's transformation from boy to soldier excellently. The thrilling, action/adventure, dramatic book that is Boy at War: A novel of the Pacific War, is just what you need if you want a little blast from the past and something fun to read.

INFAMY...on a kid's level - D. COLLIER - Brownwood, TX United States
Harry Mazer's A BOY AT WAR is at once both subtle and graphic. It is graphic, not only in showing the brutalities and carnage resulting from the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, but even, earlier than that, graphic in a beautiful way--the way in which Mazer describes the beautiful terrain of the Hawaiian Islands and Hawaiian life.

As is necessary in any good children's novel, character development is never lacking in A BOY AT WAR. Teenaged Adam Pelko, whose father serves as an officer on board the USS Arizona is the story's central character. He is at first young, naive and simply wanting the enjoy the remaining few years he has as a "kid" before sweeping into "manhood". But while fishing with some friends at Pearl Harbor, the historic moment arrives, and the "kid" is dragged kicking and screaming through a crash-course in "manhood". For it is from an old row boat while fishing one Sunday morning in December, that Adam Pelko's gut-wrenching and life-altering adventure begins.

My primary problem with this book is the author's statements about the racist attitudes of Americans during the World War II era. It is true that racist attitudes greatly abounded during those years (and now), both in America and around the world. It didn't bother me so much that America's racist attitudes were emphasized and condemned. What bothered me was that only America's racism was condemned. While America was using racial profiling to unfairly and unjustly segregate Japanese-American families, Germany was erecting concentration camps to inter (a polite word) and utterly destroy "inferior" races. And just before America began these internment camps, the Empire of Japan began exercising its racially "superior" prerogatives with devastating attacks on Manchuria, China, and of course, the Hawaiian Islands, and these examples of racism on their part incurred much more disaster and suffering than the camps America set up.

But I don't wish to end this review on a negative note. Overall, the book is exciting and very informative. I was pleased to learn that it is the first book in a trilogy and I look forward to reading the next two books.

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 01, 2010 14:11:05

Children's Books

Wednesday, September 1, 2010