When you read Hidden Letters, the book is going to leave a mark. It’s going to hurt down deep and leave you thinking about things long after you’ve finished the book. After receiving the book, I admit to approaching the book warily. The subject matter is brutal, and it’s devastating to anyone who’s a parent.

First, a little history on the book. The letters that comprise the human narrative within the pages were discovered in Amsterdam in 1997. They were written by an eighteen year old Dutch Jew named Philip “Flip” Slier. He was sent to a Dutch labor camp in 1942. When first sent there, Slier believed he was going to be treated humanely, though restricted. He didn’t know the horror that awaited him, or that he would soon be dead.

At the time Slier first went to the work camps, letters shipped regularly between the families and the restricted men. As I read the letters, I was stunned by the naïve manner that Slier exhibited. He honestly thought he was only going to be there for a short time, and that his experiences there would be nothing more than what he would endure during some summer camp.

As a father of five, I know how innocent kids can be. They think they know so much, but they’re blind to so many things. They often don’t know they’re in over their heads until it’s much too late.

And that’s what happened with Slier.

I felt somewhat guilty while reading his letters, almost voyeuristic into a world of pain and innocence. The letters are inane and even cheerful. At times Slier obviously felt he was on some grand adventure. At other times I could see that he was putting on a front for his parents, acting brave while he was scared to death, or at least mightily confused by what was going on around him.

That human element, and that innocence, is what is going to haunt me about the book. Slier also took a camera with him. He took several pictures and sent them back home to his parents and friends, and those people managed to hang onto them throughout the blackest days of World War II. I saw his face, and I saw how much of a kid he still was. He aged decades in months, and he finally got killed.

That’s one side of the story, but the authors added a tremendous amount of history materials to further the reader’s understanding of what was going on in this area at this time. More pictures and maps fill the book. On one hand, Hidden Letters is a short journal of tumultuous times in a young man’s life, but on the other hand the book is a great historical record. I love history, and I equate it with the story of people rather than names and dates. But Philip Slier’s story truly brings home the fact that history is made up of people more than dates or events.

Hidden Letters is going to satisfy the armchair historian’s perusal of the time period, and will give some sense of people and what was going on to genealogists that have discovered they’ve got family members that were in this camps at the same time. For either of those groups, I’m sure the book would be a beneficial addition.

The parents saved those letters all those years. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to pull them out every so often and read the last words of their lost son.

Scraps of Time 1960: Abby Takes A Stand is the first of a series of juvenile novels by Patricia McKissack. A group of kids help their grandmother explore the contents of her attic and find scraps of memories. As each scrap is found, the grandmother, Gee, tells a story from her childhood and from the childhoods of other family members that exposes how differently today’s world is from the one she grew up in.

McKissack is the author of several novels for young readers. Besides chapter books, she’s also written several picture books. Her subject matter ranges from serious to humorous, from realistic to historical to fantasy.

This first book of the three-book series is on the 2008 Children’s Sequoyah Masterlist. The story details the sit-ins the black community had to stage in Nashville, Tennessee to end segregation in the city. Although the story is deliberately kept small, I read the story to my son and he had no problem seeing the bigger picture as well as all the problems the black families faced while striving for equality.

McKissack’s language is simple, direct, easy-to-read, and emotional. Through just a handful of family members, the fear and outrage is quickly and efficiently shown to the reader.

Abby’s story is compelling to any parent or child. When she mistakenly ends up in a WHITES ONLY restaurant called the Monkey Bar, she’s treated horribly by the white people there. Parents can easily know what it must have felt like by imagining how their child would have felt under similar circumstances. And kids can instantly identify with Abby at being left out of something and told she wasn’t allowed to do something.

The book is only 100 pages long, with big print and illustrations by Gordon James that are equally emotional. We read it in a couple sittings without straining ourselves. I grew up in this time period in Southern Oklahoma, so a lot of what McKissack writes about was familiar to me. It’s amazing to think how much things have changed in that time period, and that our children will never really know what those times were like.

Only twelve years old, Edmund Amos Peters has already lived a life filled with incredible adventures. He and his father went down in a ship after leaving New England. Edmund was saved by Captain Gallows, one of the fiercest pirates still taking prizes in 1846. Nicknamed Shipwreck, for obvious reasons, he stays on as a cabin boy for the pirates. I’ve read several of Siddhartha Fleishman’s novels over the years, starting with By the Great Horn Spoon! when I was younger than my ten year old. I’ve always enjoyed the way he’s clever with his characters and situations, and the fact that he doesn’t dawdle. His stories always have the characters doing something at a frantic pace.

Packed full of adventure and interesting characters, The Giant Rat of Sumatra captures the imaginations of kids (and adults!) from the opening pages and doesn’t let go until the end. There’s always some problem Shipwreck and the brave Captain Gallows have to deal with.

After arriving in San Diego, California, which at that time is Mexican property, Captain Gallows declares that he’s going to go straight. He buys himself new clothes, a ranch, and even renames himself. As Don Alejandro, he sets himself up in business buying cow hides.

This is old-style adventure writing at its finest. There are mysterious characters and nefarious doings from the opening pages, and a sea battle as Americans sail into the harbor in an effort to take the city in the final pages.

In between those hooks, the juvenile novel jumps through hoops to entertain young minds and adults as well. I loved the lady bandit and her semi-stalwart gang, and the pistol duel that Captain Gallows arranges for the control of her and her crew.

The descriptions of the places and the people brought a lot of images to mind. They all seem true to life.

The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 2008 Sequoyah book. Kids in elementary school get to vote on the best of the lot if they read three of them. Parents are welcome to help, and I heartily recommend reading this one aloud, taking turns with your child if your child can read.

Bernard Cornwell is my favorite historical novelist of all time. No one delves into history and comes back with a humdinger of an action-packed and fact-filled story as he does. I first found out about him because I’m a Sean Bean fan, too. I watched a Richard Sharpe movie (set in the Napoleonic War) and discovered that the British series was based on novels. Curious, I picked up the books and started reading. I’ve been reading Cornwell ever since, and I’ve tracked him and his heroes throughout the ages.

His latest series is called the “Saxon Series” and it’s set in the 9th century in England. The books, four of them so far with more coming, center on King Alfred the Great’s war with the Danes (also known as the Vikings). I love the action and the sheer savagery of the tale and characters Cornwell has chosen to bring to life. His main characters are fictional, but many of them are straight out of history. King Alfred was real, and so was Ubba Lothbroksson, the Viking champion and great warrior. However, Cornwell shoehorns the lives – and deaths – of the real people into his story.

The books are told in the first-person, from the main character’s point of view many years later. His name is Uhtred, and he was born an Englishman. However, due to the huge changes in his life, Uhtred becomes known by many names and his allegiances are mercurial. He starts out with the English, but after his father falls to the Danes in battle, he’s raised by Earl Ragnar, one of the fiercest Viking warriors to ever take the field.

The story sounds true. For anyone who’s studied history, and I have, captives raised by other cultures than their own aren’t a surprise. History is littered with such individuals. Those people often have an impact on the way their lives and the lives of others play out. Uhtred becomes one of those people.

Cornwell’s depiction of Viking life and the bloodthirstiness of those warriors is well done. I loved how he started out with Uhtred as a ten year old boy and let him grow up among the rough-and-tumble Danes with death more or less as his constant companion. But, as all of Cornwell’s best heroes do, Uhtred rises to the occasion each and every time and faces down the threats and opponents that are in his way.

The author creates a large and twisted tapestry of the tale in The Last Kingdom. Childhood friends and villains show up again and again in Uhtred’s life, and they bring wanted and unwanted changes. One of the most telling events in Uhtred’s young life is when Sven, the son of Kjartan, kidnaps Ragnar’s young daughter and strips her out in the forest. Uhtred and Ragnar’s son save her just in time. Later, though, Ragnar takes his vengeance on Sven by blinding him in one eye. Kjartan is a shipbuilder, an important man in the Viking community, but he’s powerless before Ragnar’s rage. However, that act of vengeance comes back to haunt Ragnar and Uhtred. Nothing is ever forgiven among these people, and they carry long grudges.

The battle scenes are particularly harsh and described well. I felt as though I were standing in the shield wall next to Uhtred when he faced battle. I could feel Wasp Sting and Serpent’s Breath in my hand as he used them to defeat and kill his enemies.

The rock and roll of the waves against the Viking longships as they journeyed to other lands and fought battles on the sea is amazing. Cornwell brings that whole world to life so easily it’s breathtaking.

The first book ends while Uhtred is young and has yet to see his newborn son. He’s on his way there on the last page of this book, and if I know anything about his life, the way isn’t going to be easy. I can’t wait.

I love history and I love pirates. Thankfully history never goes away and pirates are more popular than ever. I grew up on stories of Sir Francis Drake, the most prominent of her majesty the queen’s privateer, who took his letters of marquee and seized a place in legend for himself. But I never really got into the true story about the man until I was more grown up. By then I was majoring in history in college and found the stories even more interesting because I recognized them as men who had to overcome their fears before they became swashbuckling heroes.

I was, however, guilty of not thinking overmuch about the lady that gave men like Drake the chance to become my childhood heroes. Her journey, her decisions, were – upon reflection – even harder and more awe-inspiring than her privateers.

Called the Virgin Queen, and that must have been a hard one to deal with back in her day, Elizabeth I rose to the throne a month after she turned 25. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded at the order of her husband Henry VIII. A beheading served as a divorce at the time because the Anglican Church hadn’t instituted divorce as acceptable.

For a while, Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and had no shot at the throne. That struggle was only one of many she faced, as well as religious problems within the nation and war with Spain.

Historian Susan Ronald brings all of the adventure and excitement of Elizabeth I’s life to the pages of her book. I’m ADHD and even though I love history, I oftentimes find wading through “scholarly” approaches to material I’m interested in very hard reading. My attention span wanders and I lose track in the middle of baroque sentences.

This isn’t so with Ronald’s book. She effectively nailed me to the pages with her engrossing spinning of Elizabeth I’s trials and travails. When I first hefted the book, and it is certainly hefty, I have to admit to being somewhat daunted. But then I began turning the pages. And kept turning the pages.

Eiizabeth I’s struggles to right the English economy, deal with controversy over her lineage and the religious changes she made, all became drama played out in my mind’s eye. Ronald painted sets with her words, and the people came to life. Reading this book is effortless, and it provides a splendid study of that time and the people involved.

I’d been fascinated by the Spanish Armada and how it was destroyed in 1588, but I hadn’t really felt all that was at stake if they’d won against England. The Cold War that played out between Russia and the United States between 1950s-1980s had nothing on the conflict that took place on the Atlantic Ocean during Elizabeth’s reign.

Although the book focuses a lot on the Queen’s privateers – legalized pirates by any other name – much time is spent with her relationship with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Liecester, Thomas Seymore – who was her guardian for a time, as well as those famous pirates, Sir Francis Drake, and Admiral John Hawkins.

Ronald’s book is an armchair historian’s dream and a keen, mostly unbiased, look at one of history’s most famous and most daring women. If you’ve ever been interested in pirates or English history during a most dangerous time when history could have flipped in any of several directions, The Pirate Queen: Elizabeth I, Her Daring Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire is definitely a book you should pick up.

Although almost 500 pages long, take heart in the fact that the book is heavily documents and several of those pages are reference. The layout of the book, wide margins and easy-to-read typeface, also make it extremely attractive in this time of microscopic fonts.