World War II on the Home Front: An Interactive History Adventure

by Martin Gitlin

Overview

It’s December 1941. The United States has just entered World War II. How will you help your country fight for its freedom?  Will you:  Help keep the country’s economy going as a young mother in the work force?  Try to fit into society as a wounded African American veteran?  Help end prejudice against Japanese citizens as a 12 year old California boy?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620650172
Publisher:	Capstone
Publication date:	03/01/2012
Series:	You Choose: History Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Marty Gitlin is a freelance writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. He has written more than 60 educational books on a wide variety of subjects. Gitlin has won more than 45 awards during his 30 years as a writer, including first place for general excellence from the Associated Press. That organization also selected him as one of the top four feature writers in the state of Ohio. Gitlin received national recognition in 2012 for The Great American Cereal Book, which was featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Reader's Digest, and Wall Street Journal. Gitlin lives with his wife Mitzi, daughters, Emily and Melanie, and son Andrew.

Table of Contents

The coming of war — To work or not to work — Fighting a war in San Diego — Fighting two wars — A new world.

Editorial Reviews

In the You Choose series, kids get to make their own decisions about ways to spend their time during the world wars. At the bottom of many pages, you are asked to make a decision about what to do or where to go. Subsequent decisions take you to the adventure’s end, at which point readers may choose to go back and begin again and find out where an alternate path might have led. This tried-and-true formula works quite well, giving kids a sense of what it was like to be in a situation where every decision had an impact. World War I kicks off with an overview of the war’s beginnings. It then moves to Belgium where student nurses must decide whether to stay at their hospital or flee. Later, a British teen has to choose whether to enlist or wait, and several intense choices take readers right onto the battlefield. World War II on the Home Front poses some interesting challenges. For instance, readers are asked to decide if they will help a Japanese friend or run away. If you run away, what kind of remorse do you, as a Jewish boy, have? Will you hide your friend when he is about to be put in an internment camp? With most events based on real-life stories, the books in this series do an excellent job of giving background information to illuminate the you-are-there situations. Well-chosen photos also help bring events closer. A good deal of back matter helps kids learn more.

Booklist

Depending on which path the reader chooses, there is a possible 7 endings for each one.  Everything depends on the choices made, yet in the end the reader comes away with a pretty good overview of what life on the American home front in World War II. . . .I liked the interactive element of the book, found the pictures and posters were appropriate to what was being experienced in the chapter where they appear and I liked going back and exploring a new and different path for each character.  History and concepts were explained clearly and concisely, and there is also a timeline a glossary, suggestions for further reading, and a well done index, making it a well-rounded book.

The Children's War blog

This "choose your own adventure" type book gives the reader 3 main paths to follow: that of a boy in San Diego with a Japanese friend, a woman whose husband is away at war, and an Afro-American amputee who was a soldier.  Each path has different choices that tend to follow a moral route. . . .For readers interested in what happened with people during World War II, this is a good read.

AZ) Tucson Unified School District (Tucson