Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch: Canada Series

Canada Dept: Each presents a facet of the Second World War as seen by a young first-person narrator. Torn Apart and Behind Enemy Lines are attractively designed hard covers in the Dear Canada and I Am Canada series respectively, the first aimed at girls, the other at boys. Making Bombs for Hitler is a paperback sequel to Stolen Child, an earlier war story by its author, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. All of them have a Canadian connection, according to Montreal Gazette. Mary begins her account in May 1941, when - despite the fact that Canada is at war in Europe - her life on Vancouver's Oxford St. revolves around her family, best friends, school, Girl Guide meetings and grass-hockey games and betrayal, persecution, brutality, hunger - it must be a challenge for a writer to dramatize the horrors of war for children. All three of these excellent novels from Scholastic Canada target readers in the 8-to-12 age range. All three have fictional protagonists, but are based on carefully researched historical events. For most Canadian readers, the most recognizable of these accounts will be Susan Aihoshi's Torn Apart, which examines the evacuation and displacement of Japanese Canadians from the west coast to internment camps in the B.C. interior beginning in 1942. But though the outlines of the story may seem sadly familiar, they are chilling when revisited in the diary of 12-year-old Mary Kobayashi. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.