A Variety of Interesting Books

This is Your Time by Ruby Bridges. By the woman who, as a six-year-old in 1960, became the first black child in her all-white school. She tells how she spent her entire first grade alone in the classroom with a wonderful white teacher, because the parents of the others in her class would not let them attend. She tells of some of the children she has met while speaking at schools over the years, who give her hope, the young peacemakers.

 

The war comes to Plum Street by Bruce C. Smith. Looks at lives of a few families in a small town in Indiana, before and during World War II. This book is easy to read and has detailed descriptions of life at home and at war. Topics include shortages, rationing, and lines; factories that switched from making cars and other home items to war manufacturing; the news they heard from the radio or paper, sometimes delayed; women going to work in defense factories; news about local men and women who were killed, missing in action, or in POW camps. Marriages before husbands went away and babies born while they were gone. Descriptions of some of the war action and soldiers’ travel overseas which included local people, in the Pacific, Africa, Italy, France, Germany. It tells of soldiers’ returning home; lessening of rations until sugar was the last thing rationed; final news of those who died or who left prisoner of war camps and returned, or whose bodies were never found. Beginning new lives.

 

The Heart of a Hero by Susan May Warren. A story about professional rescuers and soldiers, and a beautiful description of Jesus’ forgiveness—“Because if Jesus can forgive you, if he paid the price for those sins, what right do you have not to forgive yourself?”

 

Strait of Hormuz by T. Davis Bunn. Suspense, takes place in Switzerland, France, and Israel.

 

The Promise of Dawn by Loraine Snelling. In 1909, a family emigrates from Norway to Minnesota and works to have a farm of their own.

 

A Promised Land by Barack Obama, the first volume of Mr. Obama’s presidential memoirs.