Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Another nasty windy day here in the VI. I have the energy of a slug when the weather is like this. Feels like I should just curl up and read with the cat in my lap. We went into Red Hook last night to have pizza at Sop Choppys and about got blown off the deck. Ended up changing tables after we were cascaded with rain. Steve loves the stormy weather. He came home and sat out on the porch - not me! I am ready for some sunshine. Lost sight of a small sailboat in a bank of rain earlier this a.m. I sure wouldn't want to be out there right now.

Read the third in the trilogy of Harry Mazer's Pacific WWII novels, Heroes Don't Run. It is a solid addition to a YA collection, but at 108 pages it lacks depth. Adam enlists, under age, against his mother's wishes, in the Marines. The intensity of Marine boot camp isn't here, nor the terror of war as they fight on Okinawa. The first in the trilogy, A Boy At War, would be a good companion novel to Graham Salisbury's Under the Blood Red Sun, which is a fantastic novel about a Japanese boy in Hawaii during WWII. Although not as strong as other WWII novels for teens, Mazer's trilogy is appropriate for MS/JR high readers. Not all books have to knock your socks off when you read them, some are just solid additions that should be in a collection.