Don’t Talk to me About the War, by David Adler
The year is 1940. Growing up in the Bronx, thirteen-year-old Tommy Duncan divides his time between school, friends, and family. He listens to Brooklyn Dodgers games on the radio, plays stickball after school, and worries about his mother’s declining health.
He doesn’t share his friend Beth’s fascination about the war in Europe. The war is happening far away, and America is not involved. He’d rather read the sports page than the front page, but Beth goes to Goldman’s Diner every day, before and after school, to take advantage of the free newspapers.
Tommy meets her there every morning, and they walk to school with Sarah, a Jewish girl who escaped Austria with her parents and two young cousins. Sarah worries about her aunt and uncle still in Nazi-occupied Austria. As both girls talk about the Nazi menace in Europe, Tommy begins to pay attention.
He learns that the Nazis have trapped the British troops between the town of Dunkirk, France, and the English Channel. If help doesn’t come soon, the entire British army will be annihilated, and Germany will have a clear path to England. Together, they listen to Winston Churchill’s impassioned plea for America’s help to evacuate the stranded soldiers from Dunkirk.
(Additional Information: Learn more about the Dunkirk Evacuation.)
