Warning on Molly Mystery.

[MareGathersWords]

Okay, curiosity has gotten the better of me! Ria, would you please PM me? I'm 22... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Felicityexpert]

Does anyone else think this is a little ridiculus? It's an AG book for gosh sakes, not like it 101 things you don't want to expose to your children or something.

[annkirstin]

If it's about the German internment camps, I don't see a problem either, unless it's written in some real inappropriate manner, which is hard for me to imagine with AG. I personally did not even know about German internment camps until the subject came up in conjunction to THIS book. I knew all about Japanese camps, and though I often hear that that is a widely ignored part of American history, in my experience most everyone knows about the Japanese camps now and schools teach about them. But never once in all my education were German camps mentioned. So maybe it was a good choice on AG's part, in order to teach girls about it.

[StarTrekCaptain]

Could someone please tell me about the book?

[Brooke in BE]

Felicity+Addyfan.....YES!

[img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]

Is this such a taboo subject no one can post what the fuss is about on this board? If it's a concern for younger members on this board, then maybe this isn't the place for me.

Brooke

<font color="#051E50" size="1">[ March 12, 2005 02:59 PM: Message edited by: Brooke in Belgium* ]</font>

[annkirstin]

Brooke, I haven't read it, but I have a hard time imagining that the subject of an AG book would be something that would be taboo here. Maybe more people will give their impressions.

[mayergirl]

Felicity+Addyfan, I agree, I think it's a little ridiculous. Anyone who's too young to know about that particular topic shouldn't be on the internet unsupervised anyway. Plus, we all know that history isn't always pretty. Who knows.

[KariS]

Here is my review of the book. I can't get the spoiler function to work, so it's under the starred line so nothing will be ruined for people waiting to read it, and I promise I don't give away the ending.
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I thought the book did an excellent job in teaching kids a little more of what was going on on the home front during WWII. The book takes place in the summer 1944, while Molly is spending two weeks with her grandparents on their farm. The people that have the farm next to theirs, the Shultzes, are a nice German family (parents born in Germany, but two kids born here) Their youngest daughter, Anna, is what Molly considers her summer best friend. They ride bikes together, swim together, explore, just basically hang around. Usual kid stuff. Anna's older brother, Max, is 17 and works at the local air field.

One night Molly is at her friend's house for cookies and the family gets a letter that friends of theirs in Michigan have been taken to an internment camp for no other reason than the fact that they are Germans, although they don't support the German war effort and they had lived in the US for many years. The Shultzes are very upset, and Molly goes home and tells her grandparents. Grandparents later reveal that the same talk is buzzing around town that Mr. Shultz or Max may be a German spy. Molly is very angry they would talk that way about her friend's family as she knows they are definitely not spies.

Molly's Aunt Eleanor, who is a WASP, is flying a war plane to Texas and stops in their town for an overnight visit. She mentions to Molly that the boss at the air field is under pressure to fire Max because he's German. The next morning, Molly goes to the air field to see her aunt off and her aunt is taken away by two men from the FBI for having anti-American propaganda in her airplane. She's held for a night, and when she's released she tells Molly that Max has been arrested for using Aunt Eleanor's plane to ship his propaganda to more anti-war supporters in Texas. They believe Max is a Silver Shirt, and this is explained well in the book. Molly and Anna decides it's up to them to prove Max is innocent.
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I won't give away the ending in case some of you want to be surprised, but that takes you through basically the first half of the book. I can't even guess what everyone is so upset about. The book is not scary. They don't go into details about what takes place in the internment camps. They say that families are taken away from their homes and forced to live in these places, just because they were of German ancestry, even if they hadn't lived there for many years. THIS IS HISTORY. Alison Hart didn't make this up to scare kids. IT REALLY HAPPENED. I can't think of any 9 year old who couldn't handle reading this book. It's not a scary mystery, it's more of a who dunnit and IMO it's educational, which is more than I can say about a lot of books these days.

[bekeating]

I very much agree with Cleopatra of the Nile wrote. I think it is a very well written book and talked about history as it happened. As I stated before my oldest daughter read it and liked it. It did bring up some questions as she was reading it, but we just talked about it as she needed to. For her, it was just that she wanted to know more about what the book was talking about and she also asked the tough questions like why. Personally, I read the book too and don't see any problems with kids reading it.

Bonnie

[Brooke in BE]

Thank you!!

The fact that books like these open up the line of communication between my daughter and me is one of the very reasons I love them so much.
I would never shield my children from a historical subject just because it's not easy to hear (or read). Books are the perfect tool to bring up difficult topics. Education is the key!

Brooke