The Right Fight by Chris Lynch

Speaking of fights, Erik over at This Kid Reviews Books is trying to help a friend with epilepsy by having his own Read-a-thon. He is asking people to sponsor him for reading and getting Accelerated Reader points to raise money to help his friend Renn's family. Hop over to Erik's blog find out more and help out!


Lynch, Chris. The Right Fight (World War II: Book I)\
7 January 2014, Scholastic
Copy received from  Scholastic Book Fairs.

Roman loves to play baseball, and if it weren't for an injury, he could have gone pro, but in the early 1940s, the war was much more compelling. He signs up to fight, gets training in tank warfare, and ends up going ashore in Algeria to fight. As his tanker division fights its way into Tunisia to route the German forces there, Roman sees plenty of action. He had wanted to fight to keep the world safe, but soon realizes that the most important thing is to make it home safely.
Strengths: Lynch does a fantastic job at writing war books. He captures the feeling of "I want to fight" as well as the slow realization that fighting is not as glamorous as young men think it is before they have any real experience of it. The baseball tie in is nice, especially since the "girl at home" is also a ball player who joins the WAACs and becomes an air traffic controller!
Weaknesses: I was impressed at the writing of this one-- Lynch did a fabulous job at capturing the cadence of 1940s speech as well as some slang terms. I don't know that my students will really appreciate this.

Lott, Tim. Fearless.
9 October 2007, Candlewick Press

Fearless is in the City Community Faith School, where girls who are considered somehow not right are kept in abusive conditions in a dystopian world, supervised by The Controller. They work long hours, are fed little, are live in filthy conditions. Fearless (the girls are called by numbers but have nicknames for each other) feels that there is something more outside of the school, and comes up with a plan to escape and let the parents of the girls know how bad the conditions are. With the help of Stench, who supervises the garbage dump, she manages to sneak out with the garbage and make her way into the city. She tries a police man, a minister, and finally (after having no luck locating the parents of a girl in a wealthy section of town), a garbage truck driver, whom she presents with a bottle of tears from the girls. Aside from calling the school and getting the girls in trouble, no one on the outside does anything until the garbage truck driver, who is bothered by the tears and starts a protest against the conditions. This results in Fearless being sent to the punishment section of the school. Secrets about her family and about the leaders of the school are revealed, and hopefully, things will change.
Strengths: This was recommended to me by a student who really, really liked it. A year ago, when all of my students were asking for dystopian books, I might have bought it.
Weaknesses: This is more philosophical than action-packed, and the fairy tale feel to the narration made me feel like I was missing something. I was not surprised to find that this author usually writes books for adults.