Nonfiction Monday

Jones, Steven L. The Red Tails: World War II's Tuskegee Airmen.

1 Septemeber 2000

I had a student, who had read everything in my whole library about World War II, ask for a book on this famous unit last year, and it was hard to find books that weren't really long. At 64 pages, this Perfection Learning title did a good job of covering the basic information not only of the group, but of the historical context. Period photographs, many of the fighting machinery, help illustrate life at the time. The inclusion of information about what happened after the war in regards to the members of the Red Tails, as well as the state of military integration, was interesting as well. This will be popular with my war mongering boys. My only complaint is that the prose was VERY simple, almost annoyingly so at points. Here's an example from page 6: "Many young men wanted to become Army Air Corps pilots. It was a glamorous job. And people looked up to them. Pilots proudly wore their wings on their uniforms." What is it about high interest/low level books that makes the authors so frequently start sentences with and, but or so? Raises my hackles, although I'm sure the students don't mind.

Head over to Simply Science Blog, which is hosting Nonfiction Monday. This meme was started by Anastasia Suen.