Camp 30 by Eric Walters

Camp 30 is the sequel to an excellent book named “Camp X.” In Camp X, there are two very curious boys that live in a small town near a very secret spy training camp for World War 2 soldiers. Naturally the two boys find their way into the secret camp. They make friends with the owners of it, and learn and do a few very important and scary things.

This book starts right after Camp X. The boys and their mom move to a new town for safety reasons (You have to read the books to learn more.) In this town there is a POW camp containing German soldiers. The mom of the kids gets a job at the POW camp, and makes friends with the owners of the camp. The kids follow along with their mom to the camp and get to know some of the people there.

The head of the camp employs the boys, and they learn how open-ended the camp is. The boys can’t believe how much of a sense of happiness there is in the POW camp. There’s an armload of clubs for the prisoners to join, like a skiing club, a gardening club and much more! The reason for the overwhelming kindness for the prisoners is because Canada complied with the Geneva Convention, which states that all prisoners cannot be tortured, and must be given proper nutrition. Some of the prisoners can even walk out of the gates!

Nothing big has really happened yet, but I predict that the boys are going to get into trouble with the prisoners.

The author of this book, Eric Walters is an immensely good author. He knows how to make things interesting without being old fashioned (the books he writes are usually about current topics.) Whenever he does write a novel that is based on history such as this book, he knows how to write it.

From the things I’ve read so far, I can tell this is going to be a very good book. I highly recommend Camp X and Camp 30 to you.

A Dirty Deed by Ted Stenhouse

“A Dirty Deed” is a historical fiction book set in the ‘50’s in a very racist rural prairie town. It shows the struggle of a native kid (Arthur), who is friends with a white kid (Will.) The book starts out explaining Will and Arthur’s relationship , and how they are different from each other. It also tells of the horrible residential school that Arthur goes to.

Early on in the book, Will and Arthur are walking through a hay field, when they see some people hunting. They do a little more inspection, when they find out that it’s a young native kid that they’re hunting down! Arthur and Will follow the adults and watch the kid nicknamed “Catface” get beaten by the adults. Will and Arthur eventually find out why they are beating him. They find that aside from just plain stupidity, the adults are trying to get Catface to cough up some important papers that they seem to want very much which Catface obviously doesn’t have. They also find out that the adults are old man Howe who is a very nasty, rich and powerful person that lives in town.

The two friends find the papers buried under some rocks and take them back to town. Under closer inspection, they find out that they are property deeds of some sort and are worth a lot of money to Howe. With Arthur and Will knowing Howe, they know that he will stop at nothing to get those papers.

I am about halfway done this book, and it is pretty boring. The reasons that it is boring are that it is pretty slow paced. The author explains too much about the tiny things that the boys do together. I hope this book will get better, because it seems like a pretty good plot so far.

A good thing about this book is that it explains how horribly racist some people were back in that time. The government’s dealing with aboriginal people in that time period was definitely segregation. I wouldn’t recommend this book to you.

Flames of the Tiger - John Wilson

Flames of the Tiger is a book set in the World War II era. So far in the book, there are two kids: Dieter and his sister Greta. They are wandering around in a dark and bloody battlefield, because although very young, they were forced into the army. Early in the book it tells you how Dieter likes to daydream to get past the present moment, because it is so tough being in a war. Most of the story is told that way, where it tells you a bit about the present moment, and then flashes back to an earlier scene, which gives you background information about World War II and what it is like for people. I like this way of telling the story, because it’s effective and interesting.

The main point in the story comes when the two wandering solders come upon a wounded Canadian solider named Joe. They stop to see if he is dead or not, and find out that he’s not dead, but very close to it. He’s sort of awake, and they fear that if he falls asleep, that he will die. With the little light they have, they find out that he is caked in dried blood. The duo are desperate for help, so they figure why not tell stories about Dieter’s life to keep him alive!

The stories he tells are about life in Berlin during the war. One of the main problems is how racist the Nazis are to the Jews. He tells of some of his friends that are Jewish, and explains how they were forced out of their homes. One of the main conflicts in the story is between Dieter’s parents and his older brother: Reinhard. You see, Reinhard is a very faithful supporter to Hitler and has a high ranking in the army. His parents, however, despise Hitler, and so there is a tension between Reinhard and his parents.

Reinhard is Dieter’s role model. Dieter has some doubts about Hitler, but Reinhard praises the man. Dieter is torn on what to think.

I finished the book, and thought it was amazing. Over the summer (and now I guess) I have been reading some of the MYRCA books for this year. I read about 4 of them and I would say that this is my favorite one. It also made me think about how horrible that period of history was. I highly, really highly recommend this book to anyone.