Product Description

They rowed hard, away from the battleships and the bombs. Water sprayed over them. The rowboat pitched one way and then the other. Then, before his eyes, the Arizona lifted up out of the water. That enormous battleship bounced up in the air like a rubber ball and split apart. Fire burst out of the ship. A geyser of water shot into the air and came crashing down. Adam was almost thrown out of the rowboat. He clung to the seat as it swung around. He saw blue skies and the glittering city. The boat swung back again, and he saw black clouds, and the Arizona, his father's ship, sinking beneath the water.
-- from A Boy at War

"He kept looking up, afraid the planes would come back. The sky was obscured by black smoke....It was all unreal: the battleships half sunk, the bullet holes in the boat, Davi and Martin in the water."

December 7, 1941:
On a quiet Sunday morning, while Adam and his friends are fishing near Honolulu, a surprise attack by Japanese bombers destroys the fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Even as Adam struggles to survive the sudden chaos all around him, and as his friends endure the brunt of the attack, a greater concern hangs over his head: Adam's father, a navy lieutenant, was stationed on the USS Arizona when the bombs fell. During the subsequent days Adam -- not yet a man, but no longer a boy -- is caught up in the war as he desperately tries to make sense of what happened to his friends and to find news of his father.

Harry Mazer, whose autobiographical novel, The Last Mission, brought the European side of World War II to vivid life, now turns to the Pacific theater and how the impact of war can alter young lives forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1895816 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 112 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Mazer's (The Last Mission) taut adventure adopts the perspective of a 14-year-old newly arrived in Hawaii to capture the chaos surrounding the unexpected attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Adam is fishing near Pearl Harbor when the bombs are dropped. "That sounds so real," he says to himself at the first explosions, not yet believing the planes and noise are not part of a war exercise or maybe a movie. Taken for a navy man, he is thrown into the attempts to save lives. As the attack continues, the resulting confusion is reflected in staccato and impressionistic language: "The water around the once-proud battleship was thick with oil, and it stunk. Smoke and filth. Life rafts, pieces of boats, and men floundered in the watery debris.... A foot, an arm. He saw everything through a red haze. He ran. He slipped in blood." As the turmoil subsides, the effect on Adam of a "whole life lived in that one day" is immediate and profound. A day earlier he was struggling to measure himself against his navy lieutenant father, only to lose his father in the sunken USS Arizona and become a man himself. Mazer successfully fuses a strong portrayal of Adam's transformation with both a vivid account of the attack and subtle suggestions of the complexities of Japanese-American relations as played out in particular lives. Expert work. Ages 10-14.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 5-9-Adam Pelko has lived for only two weeks in Honolulu, where his father is an officer assigned to the USS Arizona in nearby Pearl Harbor. When he befriends Davi Mori, a high school classmate whose parents are Japanese, Adam's rigid father forbids him to associate with Davi, fearing that the anti-Japanese sentiment so rampant on the island will tarnish the Pelko family and Lieutenant Pelko's navy career. When his father is called back to the ship unexpectedly, Adam slips away from his house the following morning-December 7, 1941-to go fishing with Davi and another classmate. Rowing close to the fleet in Pearl Harbor, they witness the horrific Japanese air attack and are nearly killed themselves, their boat shot from beneath them by a low-flying fighter plane. Desperate to reach home and find out if his father is alive, Adam is spotted by an officer who mistakes him for a young enlisted man and orders him into action to help rescue survivors and restore order. Before the day is out, Adam proves himself a hero, bravely confronting death and destruction as he struggles to learn his father's fate. Mazer's final chapters leave a few issues unresolved, but his story's quick pace, graphic detail, and nonstop action will keep readers involved. Expect this novel to be in high demand after the blockbuster film Pearl Harbor arrives in the theaters this summer, generating a new wave of interest in this dramatic episode in history.-William McLoughlin, Brookside School, Worthington, OH

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 7-9. This is one of those stories that divides cleanly into before, during, and after. Adam lives with his military family in Honolulu and tries to make friends with the civilian kids at his high school. Tension builds over his father's implied order that Adam must not have friends whose parents are Japanese, and Adam's growing camaraderie with Davi Mori. Adam, Davi, and their Hawaiian compatriot, Martin, are fishing in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese planes begin to fire. The scenes that follow are not for the faint hearted: Adam's father's ship is bombed and sinking, Martin is wounded, and Davi is struck down by an American sailor. Then, Adam boards the West Virginia during a bloody battle. The chaos subsides, but the bitterness of prejudice and the numbness following his father's death remain with Adam. Written in the third person, a refreshing change of pace in historical fiction today, this economical story will grab readers from the beginning and draw them into Adam's point of view. Reader's ready identification with Adam, son of an authoritarian father and new boy at school, makes his electrifying experiences during the attack all the more riveting. With clearly drawn, sympathetic characters and a gripping story, this memorable novel lends itself to booktalks. Carolyn Phelan
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