Heavenly Peace! Shooting at the Stars: The Christmas Truce of 1914 by John Hendrix

In 1914, World War I had just begun, but the enemies, Germany against Britain and France, were already at a stalemate. It was the time of the deadly "Trench War." Well dug-in on a field in France, the enemy forces were separated along a demarcation line known as "No Man's Land" a narrow strip between the two armies. Half-frozen and almost always wet, the soldiers huddled in their shelters inside their trenches, knowing that when they ventured out to attack, most of them would be shot down by their opponents machine-gun fire at very short range.

It was a stalemate, and it was Christmas Eve when....

... A very young soldier named Charlie sat down in the mud to write a letter home to his mother.

Dearest Mother, Thank you for your last letter. Your words are such a comfort to me. I wish to serve my beloved country, England, but life in this foul pit is very trying. But, Mother, I must tell you about something that happened today--a tale so wonderful that you will hardly believe my account....

The British troops had been stuck in the trenches for almost three months, dealing with constant rain and deep, sticky mud, and although a deep freezing front has brought snow and ice, the soggy floor of the trench bunkers had frozen, giving relief from the mud, and there had been no shelling that day from the German artillery less than a hundred feet away across No Man's Land. The young soldiers rejoiced in that respite from fear and death, and then they heard... someone singing in German. It was "Silent Night!" They waited, wondering if a barrage of shells would follow, but instead, a banner saying "Merry Christmas" was raised and they heard someone shout from the German trenches:

"HELLO? ENGLISH SOLDIERS! WHERE ARE YOUR CHRISTMAS TREES?"

Someone stood up, holding up a tiny evergreen decorated with tiny birthday candles.

Rifleman Tapp tossed a jar of pear jam over to the singing Germans, and Lieutenant Lovell stood up and walked across No Man's Land and shook the hand of the German soldier with the Christmas tree for the Americans. Others followed, swapping souvenir coat buttons and belt buckles. Soldiers from both sides came out to help each other bury their dead and mount handmade crosses over their graves.

THEY TRADED PUDDINGS AND BISCUITS.

A GERMAN NAMED KARL SAID, "WHY CAN'T WE JUST GO HOME AND HAVE PEACE?"

That night the artillery barrages didn't come. To make it seem they were following orders from headquarters, the British soldiers didn't fire on the Germans. Instead, as Charlie reported to his mother...

"WE WERE SHOOTING AT THE STARS."

John Hendrix' Shooting at the Stars (Abrams Books) tells the true and timeless story of how peace broke out on Christmas Eve along the Western Front of World War I, perfectly paced and illustrated with sensitive and yet humorous illustrations that gives young middle readers both some sense of the suffering of those young men who endured the miseries of trench warfare and the beauty of that Christmas eve when foes became fellow human beings transcending the scene. Hendrix' engaging illustrations are particularly effective in portraying the feeling of young men thrust right out of school into this horrendous war. Says Horn Book's reviewer, "While not shying away from war’s grim realities, the pictures go a long way toward conveying the hopeful light of the German Christmas trees twinkling in the night.""

Recommended for both upper elementary history students and as a moving Christmas story for all ages.

And the Winner Is.... 2014 National Book Award For Young People's Literature

... Jacqueline Woodson, three-time finalist and first time winner) for her free verse novel Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014), winner of the 2014 National Book Foundation Award for Young People's Literature.  (See my review October 27 review here.)

Woodson was also a 2009 Newbery Honor Medal winner for After Tupac and D Foster.

Other short-listed finalists of books for young adults were Eliot Schrefer, for Threatened (Scholastic Press), Deborah Wiles, for Revolution (The Sixties Trilogy), (Scholastic Press), John Corey Whaley, for Noggin. (Atheneum Press), and Steve Sheinkin, for The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights (Roaring Brook Press).

National Book Award Finalists Announced

The finalists for the National Book Award for the best book in young people's literature have been announced. The five finalists include three novels, a memoir, and one historical nonfiction book.



Eliot Schrefer's Threatened (Scholastic Press, 2014) is an eco-thriller that takes young Luc and mysterious "Prof" into the forests of Gabon, to investigate the dangers to the survival of the endangered bonobo chimpanzees, where they find the chimps are not the only only endangered.




Deborah Wiley's second book in her historical fiction trilogy,Revolution (The Sixties Trilogy) (Scholastic Press, 2014) follows two characters, a white girl in sleepy Greenwood, Mississippi and a young African American boy, who meet and live through their life-changing Freedom Summer of 1964. (See my July, 2014, review here.) The first book in Wiles series is Countdown (Sixties Trilogy).




In John Corey Wiley's science fiction coming-of-age novel Noggin (Atheneum Press, 2014) finds that even a second chance to live has its problems. Travis dies of leukemia at the age of sixteen, but five years later his medically preserved head is transplanted to a donor body. But even though he's still a sophomore in his head and at school, everyone else, his friends, his first girlfriend, and his parents, are five years older and have moved on. Learning to be himself in a different body in a much changed world teaches Travis a lot about what it means to be and to live.


In her Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014), award-winning novelist and poet Jacqueline Woodson tells her own story of growing up in the 1970s as an African American girl in Columbus, Ohio, Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York, in a free-verse memoir that documents the family life and teachers who helped her realize her talent as a writer. "I know" she says, "that I was lucky enough to be born during a time when the world was changing like crazy--and that I was part of that change."


Multiple-award winning author Steve Sheinkin's The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights (Roaring Brook, 2014) looks at a little-known civil rights event in the midst of World War II. An explosion in the armaments-shipping facility at Port Chicago, in which over 300 African American sailor were killed. Sheinkin documents how the survivors refused to return to work until dangerous practices were changed and how fifty of them were court martialed as deserters in one of the first cases in the civil rights movement.


The winners of all the National Book Awards, including the prizes for adult fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, will be announced on November 19, 2014. See the complete shortlist of finalists here.