I may as well rename this blog JB yells about YA books written on or about the two world wars. Something about me: I did my undergraduate history colloquium on the First World War, so I have some minor expertise. There's so much to this war in the run-up, combat (not military strategy, gross!) and aftermath that bears careful study, and it's one of my favorite topics to cover in world studies. Therefore, to find a YA book that covers this territory is both exciting and nauseating. If it really captures the essence of the time period and the socioeconomic outcomes, let the party begin. Should it fall short in any way, it's going in the bottom of the fireplace and coming out the top. So, I approached Paul Doswell's Eleven Eleven with trepidation.
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| Three lives. No second chance. One ring to rule them all. |
PLOT
It's November 11, 1918, so you know what that means - NO SCHOOL! Not so fast, kiddos. This is the day in which 11/11 became a holiday, SO LISTEN UP. Enough of that. It's the last day of the Great War. Three teenage boys, on the front somewhere in Belgium try, to survive the waning hours of combat before the armistice officially takes hold at 11 a.m.; a German infantry, a British scalliwag, and an American hotshot pilot converge and must help each other in order to escape alive. Now thaaat's INTRIGUE!
WRITING
Glance at Dowswell's bibliography and you'll see that he's churned out half a dozen YA war novels in the last decade after years of writing non-fiction. Good for you, Paul; facts are hard! The prose is clear, and Dowswell mixes sentence lengths, throws in plenty of military slang and German terms to lend some authenticity to the proceedings, and generally does well to describe the mucky, wracked setting of the tale. HOWEVER (oh boy, it's gonna get good!) I saw the term "dummkopf" and thought, "COPYKOPF." Anyone who regularly reads YA knows that Scott Westerfeld essentially took ownership of the term through his Leviathan series, another bunch of books set around WWI, but steampunked up in a dazzling style. Sorry Paul late to the party on that one. Worse: this guy obviously has a hard-on for aviation, to the point that it's detrimental to the story. He spends SO LONG describing Eddie, the suave American, joyriding in his tinderbox of a plane. Air combat during the First World War was new, unpredictable, and deserves to be noted, but after reading two solid pages describing banking maneuvers, slamming joysticks around (gross) and daring turns to evade enemies, I thought I'd mistakenly picked up the Red Baron's diary. Get me out of here. Get back to the story. DO SOMETHING. Oh, finally, he was shot down, and all because he was out looking for one more enemy plane to shoot up in order to officially be a flying ace. Why? TO IMPRESS A GIRL. Come. on.
CHARACTERS
Naturally, the American is the most detached and selfish of the lot, at first. I suppose that stands to reason, as the USA entered the war at late stages, and didn't have a cultural horse in the race. Nice touch when Eddie, first generation American of German descent, speaks Deutsche to Axel, the German soldier, who questions why these two German boys are fighting one another. But ONCE AGAIN, it is too reminiscent of another's work - in this case the almighty Vonnegut, who recounted a similar anecdote when he was taken prisoner during WWII. The British kid is William, I think. I'm not going to look it up. He was duped into volunteering for military duty by the father of a girl he courted. It's established that YA readers in general question the motives of adults, but to demonstrate such cynicism, yeeouch! Some pointed truth, brother.
Overall, the characters function as vessels of fear and survival. they all long for something at home and clearly have no idea what they're doing in the middle of this war that long ago lost its meaning, congruent to their decision to drop nationalistic urges of violence in favor of surviving the waning hours of combat and shelling.
THE FINAL VERDICT
It's not what I would imagine the standard WWI novel to be for YA readers, but it can do in a pinch. It's no All Quiet On The Western Front, (Copykopf alert! The ending of Eleven Eleven is A LOT LIKE All Quiet's), but it does belong in the clump of books to offer students to enrich their understanding of WWI, the horrors of warfare, delusions of nationalism, putting differences aside to work together, and the whims of fanatic heads of state. Or, they could try on these tunes:
This is what Eddie puts on his Walkman before every flight.
Everything I know I learned from metal. And 20+ years of school/work experience. Mostly the latter.
Decent book. I'm not repulsed by it, but it won't be the first WWI fiction recommendation.
Below are a couple non-fiction WWI books that have plenty of visuals and describe in detail the atrocious human condition and cost. I have used these in my WWI curriculum with great success:
The Experience of World War I by J.M. Winter
NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT
A wordless book, sporting the same title as a forgettable Charlie Sheen movie, which doesn't narrow it down for you guessers. Let's just say this Arrival is better than this Arrival.
BORING STUFF
Paul Dowswell
2012 Bloomsbury
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