War of the Eagles

December 1, 1998
Gr 6-9-Jed Blackburn's English father is in Europe flying fighter planes for the RAF during World War II. Jed lives with his mother and grandmother, Tsimshian Indians, on the west coast of Canada. He and his mother work at an army base, where Jed, with the help of his best friend Tadashi, is nursing a bald eagle back to health after it was shot by soldiers at the base. The boy's world is severely shaken when Tadashi's family, and the entire Japanese-Canadian community, is sent to detention camps in central Canada after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is not primarily an action-adventure story. Its strength lies in Jed's growth through the course of the novel. He confronts racism directed at him because of his native heritage and at the Japanese-Canadians, the complexity of friendship, and his own cultural identity. At the same time, he must deal with a world conflict that has taken away his father and his best friend. Jed's mother and grandmother are strong and intelligent characters who help him come to terms with these issues. A well-written and engaging book.-William C. Schadt, Glacier Park Middle School, Maple Valley, WA

December 15, 1998
Gr. 5^-7. The pace never flags in this tale of a Canadian teenager who comes to recognize the value of his Tsimshian heritage as he witnesses the harsh treatment meted out to citizens of Japanese descent in the opening months of World War II. With his father off fighting in the RAF, Jed and his mother move to the coastal settlement where she grew up; there, a job at the new army base nearby allows him to track the hardening attitude toward the Japanese residents of a local fishing village--all of whom are ultimately forced to evacuate. In a series of set-piece dialogues and incidents, mostly between Jed and his friend Tadashi, Walters methodically explores the anger and shame on every side that prejudiced remarks and behavior engender. Thanks to Walters' fluent storytelling, though, and several subplots, as well as some engaging banter between Jed, his fierce mother, and his wise grandmother, the lessons never weigh the story down, and although this lacks the sweeping climax that the attack on Pearl Harbor gave to Graham Salisbury's "Under a Blood Red Sun" (1994), Jed does in the end act on his conviction that wrong has been done. A multifaceted, well-knit story. ((Reviewed December 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)