Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* By December 1918, the western front of World War I featured two parallel trenches stretching from the North Sea to the Alps. The armies, both suffering from exposure and disease as well as enemy fire, were so close that they could sometimes hear each other talking. On Christmas Day, an informal peace broke out in many locations along the front. Soldiers gathered between the trenches to mingle, exchange small gifts, and bury their dead. It was apparently the first truce to come from the troops, rather than their leaders. Murphy's excellent telling of this unusual war story begins with an account of the events that led to WWI and follows the shift in the soldiers' mind-sets from the feverish rush to join before the war ended to the painful realization that no end was in sight. Printed in tones of sepia, the illustrations in this handsome volume include many period photos as well as paintings and maps. After discussing the book's origins, the epilogue comments on the effects of government misinformation, past and present. A time line, excellent source notes, and lists of books, movies, and Web sites are appended. Well organized and clearly written, this presentation vividly portrays the context and events of the Christmas Truce.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Murphy's (A Savage Road to Thunder) account of the causes and first months of WWI offers a poignant and sometimes graphic introduction to the "war to end all wars." While a few of the sepia-toned photos and artwork portray haunting imagery (including one of dead bodies in a trench), the six-chapter narrative doesn't bog down in gloom and hopelessness. Instead, its focus-the Christmas truce that occurred along Western Front trenches in 1914-leaves readers with hope in the human spirit and a sense of the folly and futility of the Great War. The grainy pictures of the truce, taken with soldiers' own cameras, show combatants standing shoulder to shoulder, often smiling or exchanging gifts. "German soldiers noticed that a wooden board was being held up by British soldiers with the words `Merry Christmas'.... Several miles away, another board appeared on the German side that read, `You no fight, we no fight.' " Myriad quotations from young men on both sides (often taken from letters home) set a very personal tone. An extensive time line and additional source material wrap up this moving history lesson. Ages 9-12. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-Accessible and engaging, this is a detailed chronicle of life on the battlefield and the political machinations that fueled the war. Murphy describes how amid this chaos, a handful of soldiers defied their commanding officers for a few hours on Christmas, 1914 by not fighting. Archival photos, maps, and political cartoons round out this first-rate work. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) Murphy's account of the famed Christmas Truce, which spontaneously and irregularly broke out along the Western Front on Christmas Eve, 1914, occupies only the middle part of this history, which is just as it should be. The first third of the book ambitiously -- but sparely and effectively, too -- outlines the causes of the Great War, demonstrating that the alleged flashpoint of the Archduke's assassination was but an excuse for the already bristling powers to get on with the war. Murphy then moves into a close-up view of the trenches on both sides of No Man's Land, a shift in perspective thematically allied to the decisions of the foot-soldiers to stop fighting, if only for a day or two. The historical background Murphy provides gives the truce emotional resonance; his subsequent, concise summary of the next four years of carnage is all the more sobering in contrast. Plentiful photographs and period illustrations convey the paradoxes well: German corpses in a trench in France; English and German officers posing together in No Man's Land. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"Every Who / Down in Who-ville / Liked Christmas a lot / But the Grinch, / Who lived just north of Who-ville, / Did NOT!" Christmas books started arriving last springimagine opening a box in May and finding it full of red, green, gold and sparkles. The mad rush to wring a few more bucks out of every passing Christmas is enough to set my Grinch fingers drumming. This season, we'll see two Nutcracker picture books, a couple of Night Before Christmases, a few Nativity tales and Tyrannoclaus, which marries two can't-beat-it concepts for kidsdinosaurs and acquisition (imagine that elevator pitch)among many, many others, all rounded up in our September 15 issue. There are a few nods to "multiculturalism," with a scant handful of Hanukkah books, one lonely Kwanzaa title and a very funny anti-consumerist Solstice book, but it's clear that Christmas is the moneymaker holiday of the year, and the sheer volume of Christmas books has me plotting Grand Theft Who-hash to a Boris Karloff soundtrack: "You're a mean one" But then I open a box containing Truce, by Jim Murphy (Scholastic, Oct. 1, 2009, $19.99, ISBN: 978-0-545-13049-3), and I think that perhaps I might sing another tune. Murphy takes his epigraph from Winston Churchill, who wondered in a November 1914 letter to his wife, "What would happenif the armies suddenly and simultaneously went on strike and said some other method must be found of settling the dispute?" The "dispute," of course, was the Great War, the War to End All Wars until it became the First World War. And the truce of the book's title is that magical, spontaneous Christmas truce of 1914, when peace broke out all along the Western Front. Opening with a cogent recap of the state of Europe prior to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that focuses on those moments when war might have been averted (if Kaiser Wilhelm had read his mail on time, for instance), the author gracefully moves to the horrific conditions of battle that established the static madness of trench warfarea madness that, oddly enough, led to enough fraternization across No Man's Land that both British and German High Commands feared what eventually happened. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, from letters home, diaries and recollections of combatants to archival photographs and prints, the author allows the principles to speak: "Altogether we had a great day with our enemies," wrote one British private, "and parted with much handshaking and mutual goodwill." That goodwill didn't lastthough in one spot in the Belgian woods the truce lasted almost till Easterand Murphy takes readers through to the exhausting endgame that spawned the next war, but also he leaves kids with the provocative thought that war need not be inevitable, that the truce "offered reassurance that a kinder, humane spirit could prevail" And if that doesn't make even the Grinch-iest heart grow at least three sizes, then nothing will. Who-pudding, anyone? Vicky Smith Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
