From the author of The Wave comes a poignant and timely novel about a group of seventh graders who are brought together-and then torn apart-by an afterschool club that plays a video game based on WW2.
There's a new afterschool club at Ironville Middle School.
Ms. Peterson is starting a video game club where the students will playing The Good War, a new game based on World War II.
They are divided into two teams: Axis and Allies, and they will be simulating a war they know nothing about yet. Only one team will win. But what starts out as friendly competition, takes an unexpected turn for the worst when an one player takes the game too far.
Can an afterschool club change the way the students see eachother...and how they see the world?
'By using a gaming lens to explore the students' entrée to prejudice and radicalization, he succeeds in lending immediacy and accessibility to his cautionary tale.'-Kirkus Reviews
It’s the summer of 1962, and Scott and his friends spend their days playing baseball and thinking about girls. But the threat of nuclear war looms over everything they do, and they are haunted by the idea that they could all be dead tomorrow. Even though the possibility of war is all anyone talks about, Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst, building a bomb shelter to protect his family and stocking it with enough supplies to keep them alive for two critical weeks. The neighbors scoff, but then, in the middle of the night in late October, the unthinkable happens. Suddenly ten people are crammed into a shelter built for four. Ten people eating the food meant for four, breathing the air meant for four. Ten people struggling to survive — but what will await them when they eventually emerge? Internationally bestselling author Todd Strasser has written his most impressive and personal novel to date, painstakingly yet sensitively exploring the terrifying what-ifs of one of the most explosive moments in history.
A heartbreaking novel that offers no easy answers, Give a Boy a Gun addresses the growing problem of school violence. Although it is a work of fiction, it could tragically be the leading nightly news story in any community. After a high school shooting at her alma mater, a college journalism student returns home to interview students, teachers, parents, and friends of the suspects. Intermingled with her interviews are journal entries written by the two troubled boys responsible for the shooting. Their journals chronicle years of systematic abuse at the hands of their classmates and follow the boys' frustration and pain as they turn to rage. Give a Boy a Gun explores every angle and raises tough questions about peer bullying, gun control and accountability. A full cast of narrators' voices add a dramatic reality to this provocative work.
