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x_nr_'s review against another edition
4.0
This one was a like a 'back to basics' book for me. I wanted to read a kid's version before dwelling into the more horrific details. I do enjoy reading history and this was a good brisk walk through time. Not recommended for someone who is looking to gauge a detailed account of 2nd world war, obviously.
ewein2412's review against another edition
I thought this was an excellent book.
Up until this book my sole experience of Terry Deary was a free CD off a cereal packet--I think it was bits from Vicious Vikings--read by Deary himself. I wasn't impressed. OK, a wee bit of history was coming through. And it was entertaining. But it was hard to weed out the bad puns and jokey padding.
I've revised my opinion of him based on The Woeful Second World War. Although it doesn't really give you a clear chronological overview of the war, it achieves other worthwhile aims remarkably well:
1) Deary gives you some idea of the scale of the war, no mean feat: of the true global nature of the war, of the unimaginable number of casualties both military and civilian, of the atrocities, of the heroism, of the hardship.
2) Deary does an awesome job of representing people as people: some good, some bad, some a little of both, but never simpy baddies or goodies based on nationality or credo. A good example is the way he deals with the firebombing of Dresden, describing the entire event as though it took place in London. He identifies the real city at the last minute--AFTER you've imagined it all taking place on home soil (for us readers in Great Britain). And, oh, whoops. We were the baddies this time.
The obvious baddies, the individual crazy minds capable of committing unthinkable evil, are not spared. They're ridiculed and scorned and condemned. But Deary never lets you map the sins of any lunatic individual onto his or her countrymen simply because they share a nationality--or even because they share a dogma.
Martin Brown's excellent illustrations help a lot, I think, to maintain the neutrality and the ordinariness of civilians. It's a book aimed at kids, of course, and I think it's really easy to look at the people pictured here and think of them as your neighbors, or your schoolmates, or your gran.
As with many British kids' books focussed on WWII, it's a bit lacking in Pacific Rim info. I keep hammering into my own American children (who have grown up in the UK) that yes, there WERE concentration camps on American soil in which normal American civilians were imprisoned based on their Japanese heritage. (Ok, Manzanar Does Not Equal Auschwitz. But it's still a violation of human rights.) And somehow the atomic bombs and their aftermath have not made it into my daughter's cultural literacy as this did into mine. But I'd still recommend this book as an excellent overview and intro to the horrors and heroics of the Second World War.
The book's final image is a vignette showing two figures in silhouette: a child apparently wearing a GI's helmet, holding hands with a bareheaded man who may be the soldier whose helmet the child wears. They're walking through a scenic landscape with an intact, pretty village in the distance, and the child says in a speech bubble: "Why is it that the ones who most need to remember are the ones most likely to forget?"
Up until this book my sole experience of Terry Deary was a free CD off a cereal packet--I think it was bits from Vicious Vikings--read by Deary himself. I wasn't impressed. OK, a wee bit of history was coming through. And it was entertaining. But it was hard to weed out the bad puns and jokey padding.
I've revised my opinion of him based on The Woeful Second World War. Although it doesn't really give you a clear chronological overview of the war, it achieves other worthwhile aims remarkably well:
1) Deary gives you some idea of the scale of the war, no mean feat: of the true global nature of the war, of the unimaginable number of casualties both military and civilian, of the atrocities, of the heroism, of the hardship.
2) Deary does an awesome job of representing people as people: some good, some bad, some a little of both, but never simpy baddies or goodies based on nationality or credo. A good example is the way he deals with the firebombing of Dresden, describing the entire event as though it took place in London. He identifies the real city at the last minute--AFTER you've imagined it all taking place on home soil (for us readers in Great Britain). And, oh, whoops. We were the baddies this time.
The obvious baddies, the individual crazy minds capable of committing unthinkable evil, are not spared. They're ridiculed and scorned and condemned. But Deary never lets you map the sins of any lunatic individual onto his or her countrymen simply because they share a nationality--or even because they share a dogma.
Martin Brown's excellent illustrations help a lot, I think, to maintain the neutrality and the ordinariness of civilians. It's a book aimed at kids, of course, and I think it's really easy to look at the people pictured here and think of them as your neighbors, or your schoolmates, or your gran.
As with many British kids' books focussed on WWII, it's a bit lacking in Pacific Rim info. I keep hammering into my own American children (who have grown up in the UK) that yes, there WERE concentration camps on American soil in which normal American civilians were imprisoned based on their Japanese heritage. (Ok, Manzanar Does Not Equal Auschwitz. But it's still a violation of human rights.) And somehow the atomic bombs and their aftermath have not made it into my daughter's cultural literacy as this did into mine. But I'd still recommend this book as an excellent overview and intro to the horrors and heroics of the Second World War.
The book's final image is a vignette showing two figures in silhouette: a child apparently wearing a GI's helmet, holding hands with a bareheaded man who may be the soldier whose helmet the child wears. They're walking through a scenic landscape with an intact, pretty village in the distance, and the child says in a speech bubble: "Why is it that the ones who most need to remember are the ones most likely to forget?"
wandering_reads's review against another edition
4.0
Anything that gets kids interested in history rather than just electronic devices is a winner in my book. I've read a few of the Horrible History series, and it gets right down to the good, bad, and ugly without skimming the really ugly parts of the war. The ending illustration is the most poignant part of the book, however, especially when considering the horrific scale of mass murder in WWII.
sarahbc93_'s review against another edition
3.0
I don’t know how many more ways I can say that I’ve read another Horrible Histories book and still have it sound slightly interesting! At least there aren’t many more for me to get through so I won’t have to worry about that for too much longer.
This one focuses on the Second World War, and while this is a topic we did cover in school, we didn’t cover it in a lot of detail so there are huge parts of it that I don’t know or that I had forgotten.
What was good about this one is that it does tell you about the resistance fighters and the struggles of the ordinary people as well as still showing the overarching political madness that was WWII.
This one focuses on the Second World War, and while this is a topic we did cover in school, we didn’t cover it in a lot of detail so there are huge parts of it that I don’t know or that I had forgotten.
What was good about this one is that it does tell you about the resistance fighters and the struggles of the ordinary people as well as still showing the overarching political madness that was WWII.
lemon2's review
5.0
one of the best books out there and i will die on this hill thank you very much.