Too Young to Fight: Memories from Our Youth During World War II

Galloway (Snake Dreamer) and 11 other Canadians, most of them authors of children's books, share their recollections of growing up during WWII. Taken together, the pieces evoke the leisurely feeling of stories shared around the family dinner table. The most memorable moments come through in the details: Janet Lunn discusses her desire to hide her grandparents' German names; Dorothy Joan Harris describes the rising tensions in the late 1930s in Japan, where her father was an English professor, that finally drove the family to Canada, as well as her inability to reconcile the stories of ""ferocious"" Japanese soldiers with the kindness she had known there; Jean Little writes of the ""War Guests,"" British children sent to Canada to keep safe during wartime. In one of the book's most poignant passages, filmmaker Christopher Chapman quotes from a letter from his brother overseas, which the family received several days after learning of his death. Other standouts include a lyrical entry by Joy Kogawa and Timothy Nakayama, Japanese-Canadian siblings who were forced to leave their home and relocate to a ""spindly old ghost town,"" and Brian Doyle's stream-of-consciousness chronicle of the day following Japan's surrender, which is at once humorous and haunting. An intimate glimpse of the ways in which the war affected home life even on peaceful shores. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)