well so far i think that it is a very good book and i am very interested and i think it is very sad about what is going on in the book right now and i hope that everything turns out for the best in the book looking forward to reading the rest.!!!!

What a lovely little book this is! I love Karen Hesse's other work, but somehow this one had never crossed my path. Picked it up, read it in an hour, learned about a whole new episode of American history.

This is a wonderfully written story about the Aleutian tribe, told through a young girl's point of view. She has many struggles with mother and within herself about staying true to her Aleutian tribe's way of life, or adapting to the way of life she was forced into when she and her tribe were involuntarily evacuated from their Alaskan island.

This book is a good resource to incorporate with in a unit on WWII because it presents a culture that isn't one that is usually discussed, or known about. I am not saying that time should be spent reading the entire book, but a few key poetic versus to show what the Aleutian people went through would be helpful. Also being that is is historical fiction it would allow the students to learn about this occurence in a more interesting way. With a read aloud of just a few of the poems it may spark some of your students interest to perhaps read it on their own for fun, or during the course of studying poetry. As a preservice teacher it was helpful for me to see that there are books like this that can be used in a varetiy of ways with in the classroom. This book is suitable for around 6th through 8th grade, maybe 5th depending on your students. My first impression after finishing the book was that I really didn't like it, then through our class discussion it made me gain a better appreciation of this book.

I think this is a great book to use in conjunction with a social studies lesson about WWII. The story of the Aleutians is not one commonly addressed in education, so it is a good way to show the marginalized accounts of some groups. It also offers a great basis for comparison regarding the treatment of others and the "persecution" some experienced at the hands of governments. I would not use it without background knowledge of both the time period and the people first. I also do not...more I think this is a great book to use in conjunction with a social studies lesson about WWII. The story of the Aleutians is not one commonly addressed in education, so it is a good way to show the marginalized accounts of some groups. It also offers a great basis for comparison regarding the treatment of others and the "persecution" some experienced at the hands of governments. I would not use it without background knowledge of both the time period and the people first. I also do not think that I would also not use the entire text, but perhaps sections from it. It is easy to read, it offers a minority perspective that is often marginalized, it is something my students might be able to redly relate to.

On a literary note, it is unique in its style. It is historical fiction written in pros. I might be a good point to introduce the students to the genre and the subject.

This is the fictionalized account of the true event during World War II when the U.S. government relocated thousands of residents of the Aleutian Islands to the forests in southeast Alaska as told through the eyes of a young girl, Vera. They remained there for three years, and one in four died. This book should be included in any study of World War II as much as study is given to the relocation of Japanese, which has been given more attention. I never knew of this relocation or its effect on the Aleutian people. It is told by Hesse in lyrical verse, each page its own poem, usually short and with its beginning written in a kind of inverted paragraph style. Her imagery for nature was unique and breathtaking. I love trees and that environment and would likely not eagerly live in an environment without them, yet Hesse does just that: as Vera, yearns for the sun, the fog, the wind, the ocean and its inhabitants and all the native plants that are a part of her culture and grows angry with the shade and wetness of the trees, the lack of sun that are their relocation camp, I began to miss her home too, fear the damage the relocation is doing to them as a people, as a culture. As one poem states at its end: "How many times can a people lose their way, before they are lost forever?" An abundance of metaphors and similes saturate the text and would be an excellent mentor text to students ages 10 and up who are studying the use of such imagery in their writing.In fact, though, that strength was also at times its weakness for me: I as the reader could get caught up in the magical wording of her metaphors and similes and not pay as much attention to the gravity or melancholy or pain that she is writing about.

This book is told through a series of poems. It is the story of Vera who lives on the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska during WWII. She is forced to leave everything she knows.

Personally I never knew anything about the pearl harbor bombing so I thought this book was very interesting. Even though the book did not actually talk about the pearl harbor bombing it gave the perspective of a person who had to go to an evacuation camp and leave to a different part of Alaska. I would recommend this book to any your reader who wants a short interesting read.

My first impression of this book was that it appeared to be an easy read. However, the writing style is too sketchy. The author’s switching from log style observation to romantic poetic style description is distracting and a serious interruption to the flow of the story. The author relinquishes any responsibility for historical accuracy by stating that it “is a work based on true events.” The author does not state which events these are, so further research would have to be done by the reader to separate fact from fiction. The character of Vera can be related to on a general level in her displacement from her home. However, her character lacked depth. While the author used some actual events and maybe interviewed Aleutians for this story, there is still a superficial quality to this work that simply capitalizes on a bad and sorrowful situation.

Sad and beautiful. The reader gives a good presentation by not pumping lots of emotion into the story. She lets the words tell the emotion instead of her voice.

Great story written like poetry about the Japanese attack on the Aleutian Islands and the relocation of the Aleut people by our Government to Alaska.

1. This book was sort of depressing all the way around. Beginning to end. Parts in between. Sad. Sad. Sad.
2. I love learning about things that I’ve never known before, so I wish this had more background information and more at the end.
3. I love the symbol of the sparrow as hope and determination.
4. Vera+Alfred=4ever
5. Passages I loved:
“Alfred’s grandfather says, ‘Remember, we were once unparalleled hunters, men of the sea.
We were the elders of the world.
We had our own language, our fierce victories, our tribal pride.
The Russians ended that.
We went from ten thousand to eight hundred. Our grandparents perished. Our parents perished. And that was before the Americans came. How many times can a people lose their way Before they are lost forever?’”

“The deer move freely through these chilling woods. If our men had guns, they could hunt, we could get our own food and not rely so much on handouts from the government. But we are not given guns, and our own are rusting in our Aleutian homes. The deer has more freedom to feed itself than we.”

“Last year, in Unalaska village, when the fierce wind played the grass like a tempest of green violins, when the waves crashed against the rocks and the spume rose like raging sea lions, when the snow turned to sleet, the sleet to rain, the rain to hail, the hail back to snow again. I did not know I loved Alfred.”

“The elders from Nikolski tell of the time before the white men came, when a single tree grew in the Aleutians and the Aleutian sparrow sang as it flew around the ascending trunk. The seasoned tree proudly wore its struggle for life, and it alone reached up through the fog into the heavens. The Russians chopped the tree down and built their Aleutian homes from its wood, and all those who touched the wood of that tree and lived in those homes met an early and mysterious death. Here in our Southeast camp there are a thousand trees, but where is the Aleutian sparrow?”

“We sang to her when she fretted in the Gray morning, We sang to her as we carried her back and forth across the cabin floor, We sang to her in the night when a cough stiffened her infant body. Our music, which could lull a healthy baby to a night of sweet dreams, carried her, wrapped in the many voices of our people, back to the house of the innocents.”