Operation YES: Sara Lewis Holmes

This lively book for middle schoolers chronicles the classroom activities and excitement of a group of sixth graders in a school located on an air force base in the US. Their new teacher, Ms. Loupe, uses improvisational drama techniques to stimulate imagination and problem-solving in her students. Once they catch on, classroom energy changes and disinterested students perk up.
When Ms. Loupe's brother is missing in action in Afghanistan and later rescued as a wounded soldier, the class rallies on her behalf, and his. Drama in the classroom and the real life drama ever-present for military kids could be a compelling draw for readers.

WAR IS...soldiers, survivors, and storytellers talk about war--Marc Aronson & Patty Cambell, Editors

The editors of this important book for teens and young adults came at their topic from quite different directions. Aronson, the author of many award-winning nonfiction books for teens, says: "I believe that it is criminal to ask soldiers to fight for us without then listening to them. They overcome their fear and pay the physical price in injuries, the psychic price of seeing friends killed, and the soul price in having to kill others. We cannot asking others to do this for us without hearing them, healing them and caring for them."


Patty Campbell, a young-adult librarian, critic, editor and author says: " The plain and simple truth is that war is insane--but not inevitable. I have faith that young people can be freed of the delusions of glory that have made war so attractive to them if we make it our priority to show them the ugly reality of participating in a war."

The result of this collaboration is a collection of more than twenty commissioned and edited pieces of fiction and nonfiction, dedicated to trusting readers with the truth.

Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells

India Moody lives in northern Virginia with her family. They are caught in the whirlwind and chaos of the Civil War. India, at 14, has intense questions about the war: why is it happening, is it about slavery, why do some neighbors fight for the North while others don uniforms for the South? Underneath it all is the unspoken question: what is war really like and why do people pursue it, often to hopeless ends?
Wells uses the probing of India as she navigates between her parents, the oncoming Union troops, freed slaves, and ravaged neighbors to ask these important questions which are contemporary in the age of Iraq and Afghanistan. She experiences the horrors of a battlefield while she presses to find her father who is in charge of ambulances and care of the wounded in his Rebel regiment.
Although the story of Civil War chaos and struggle has been told many times, this book offers a unique opportunity to readers, their parents and teachers to look at the issues it raises and come to their own conclusions.