Truce

by Jim Murphy

Overview

Two-time Newbery Honor Book author Jim Murphy writes a stunning nonfiction masterpiece about a Christmas miracle on the Western Front during World War I.

On July 29th 1914, the world's peace was shattered as the artillery of the Austria-Hungary Empire began shelling the troops of the country to its south. What followed was like a row of falling dominoes as one European country after another rushed into war. Soon most of Europe was fighting in this calamitous war that could have been avoided. This was, of course, the First World War. But who could have guessed that on December 25 the troops would openly defy their commanding officers by stopping the fighting and having a spontaneous celebration of Christmas with their "enemies"? In what can only be described as a Christmas Miracle, this beautiful and heartrending narrative will remind everyone how brotherhood and love for one another reaches far beyond war and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545365277
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
Lexile:	NC1160L (what's this?)
File size:	61 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jim Murphy was the celebrated author of more than thirty-five books for young readers, most notably Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting and The Great Fire, a Newbery Honor Winner. His carefully researched, engaging, and elegantly written nonfiction garnered the most prestigious awards in the field.

Editorial Reviews

Despite its grim details (including a few photographs of carnage), this is a fitting holiday book
—The Washington Post

Abby McGanney Nolan

"Every Who / Down in Who-ville / Liked Christmas a lot . . . / But the Grinch, / Who lived just north of Who-ville, / Did NOT!"Christmas books started arriving last spring-imagine opening a box in May and finding it full of red, green, gold and sparkles. The mad rush to wring a few more bucks out of every passing Christmas is enough to set my Grinch fingers drumming. This season, we'll see two Nutcracker picture books, a couple of Night Before Christmases, a few Nativity tales and Tyrannoclaus, which marries two can't-beat-it concepts for kids-dinosaurs and acquisition (imagine that elevator pitch)-among many, many others, all rounded up in our September 15 issue. There are a few nods to "multiculturalism," with a scant handful of Hanukkah books, one lonely Kwanzaa title and a very funny anti-consumerist Solstice book, but it's clear that Christmas is the moneymaker holiday of the year, and the sheer volume of Christmas books has me plotting Grand Theft Who-hash to a Boris Karloff soundtrack: "You're a mean one . . . "But then I open a box containing Truce, by Jim Murphy (Scholastic, Oct. 1, 2009, $19.99, 9780545130493), and I think that perhaps I might sing another tune. Murphy takes his epigraph from Winston Churchill, who wondered in a November 1914 letter to his wife, "What would happen . . . if the armies suddenly and simultaneously went on strike and said some other method must be found of settling the dispute?" The "dispute," of course, was the Great War, the War to End All Wars until it became the First World War. And the truce of the book's title is that magical, spontaneous Christmas truce of 1914, when peace broke out all along the Western Front.

Opening with a cogent recapof the state of Europe prior to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that focuses on those moments when war might have been averted (if Kaiser Wilhelm had read his mail on time, for instance), the author gracefully moves to the horrific conditions of battle that established the static madness of trench warfare-a madness that, oddly enough, led to enough fraternization across No Man's Land that both British and German High Commands feared what eventually happened. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, from letters home, diaries and recollections of combatants to archival photographs and prints, the author allows the principles to speak: "Altogether we had a great day with our enemies," wrote one British private, "and parted with much handshaking and mutual goodwill."That goodwill didn't last-though in one spot in the Belgian woods the truce lasted almost till Easter-and Murphy takes readers through to the exhausting endgame that spawned the next war, but also he leaves kids with the provocative thought that war need not be inevitable, that the truce "offered reassurance that a kinder, humane spirit could prevail . . . " And if that doesn't make even the Grinch-iest heart grow at least three sizes, then nothing will. Who-pudding, anyone?-Vicky Smith

Kirkus Reviews

Best Books for Young Adults, 2010 American Library Association Best Children's Books of the Year, 2010 Bank Street College of Education Booklist Editors Choice: Books for Youth, 2009 American Library Association Bulletin Blue Ribbons, 2009 Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Choices, 2010 Cooperative Children's Book Center Notable Books for a Global Society, 2010 Children's Literature Special Interest Group IRA Notable Children's Books, 2010 ALSC American Library Association School Library Journal Best Books,2009 YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, 2010 American Library Association* "Well organized and clearly written, this presentation vividly portrays the context and events of the Christmas Truce." — Booklist, starred review*"Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, from letters home, diaries and recollections of combatants to archival photographs and prints, the author allows the principles to speak...he leaves kids with the provocative thought that war need not be inevitable, that the truce 'offered reassurance that a kinder, humane spirit could prevail.'" — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

From the Publisher