December 7, 2020
Through a grant, “Extra Credit” Caleb Arnett has secured top-of-the-line gaming computers for Ironville Middle School, a largely white institution whose football team was cut due to funding, and he’s now one of the inaugural members of the school’s eSports club. With teacher approval, the kids, including team captains Emma Lopez and Gavin Morgenstern, select The Good War—a WWII game in which players take the sides of Axis or Allies. The students react in various ways to their new knowledge of Nazism: after a few weeks, Gavin’s team asks to be Axis for every round, and they begin trying out German accents and clothes, seemingly unaware of these actions’ implications. Online, an older white supremacist begins grooming one of the players, employing hateful rhetoric that coincides with outside intrusions of Nazi slogans and images into the club’s chat box and matches. Strasser (The Summer of ’69) packs a lot into this brief tale—while his damning of hate groups is anything but subtle, by using a gaming lens to explore the students’ entrée to prejudice and radicalization, he succeeds in lending immediacy and accessibility to his cautionary tale. Ages 10–up. Agent: Stephen Barbara, InkWell Management.
December 1, 2020
Gr 5-7-The kids at Ironville Middle School love "The Good War," a popular WWII-based video game. It's no wonder that when math teacher Ms. B starts an esports club, that's the game they want to play, with two teams competing against each other as Axis vs. Allies. It's not long before symbols of hatred from that era in history show up in the mannerisms and clothing of the kids on the Axis team, leading to a violent confrontation between the two sides. Strasser tells a compelling, character-driven tale, demonstrating a keen understanding of how tweens think. Juggling eight different characters, including upstanding Caleb, socially anxious Emma, misunderstood footballer Gavin, and bullied Zach, Strasser creates authentic and appealing individuals. Reminiscent of the characters in The Breakfast Club, the esports members evolve over the course of the novel, changing the way they see themselves-and their peers. None of the students' race or ethnicity are described; the town of Ironville is described as "mostly white." The novel drives home the consequences of the Axis students' dangerous embrace of hate images they have not been educated about and don't understand. The lesson is a bit undermined by the flawed premise that a public school teacher would permit seventh graders to play a rated M, first-person shooter game in a school club, even if they enjoy it at home. VERDICT A timely message, engagingly told. Purchase for middle grade collections.-Marybeth Kozikowski, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY
Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2021
The school board has cut funding for football at Ironville Middle School, but Ms. B hopes her new eSports club might "give students something else to focus on. Something to get excited about." After all, the eight shiny new gaming computers she has gotten through a technology grant for low-income schools aren't costing the school anything, and the students are sure to love playing a World War II simulation game pitting the Allies against the Axis. But that game soon spirals out of control. Axis members walk the hallways wearing gray shirts and Iron Crosses and talking in fake German accents. Chat rooms resound with "Long live the Axis. Sieg Heil!" And when Ally member Emma puts on her headphones, she hears sounds of boots marching, crashes of cymbals and drums, and someone (presumably Hitler) giving a passionate speech in German. Her monitor displays Iron Crosses, swastikas, burning crosses, and nooses. The Good War has become more than a game; "evil has seeped into the real world." Strasser revisits themes from his now-classic The Wave (1981), a fictionalized account of an actual 1967 history class simulation that went too far. The prose is simple, the themes heady, and the conflicts intense, all balanced by an in-your-face encounter with the worst of middle-school life: bullying, cheating, boys spitting loogies onto the ceiling of the "pissorium," and cellphone-obsessed students pursuing their meanness 24/7 on social media. It's a quick read and a thought-provoking reflection of the underbelly of our times. Dean Schneider
(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
July 1, 2021
The school board has cut funding for football at Ironville Middle School, but Ms. B hopes her new eSports club might "give students something else to focus on. Something to get excited about." After all, the eight shiny new gaming computers she has gotten through a technology grant for low-income schools aren't costing the school anything, and the students are sure to love playing a World War II simulation game pitting the Allies against the Axis. But that game soon spirals out of control. Axis members walk the hallways wearing gray shirts and Iron Crosses and talking in fake German accents. Chat rooms resound with "Long live the Axis. Sieg Heil!" And when Ally member Emma puts on her headphones, she hears sounds of boots marching, crashes of cymbals and drums, and someone (presumably Hitler) giving a passionate speech in German. Her monitor displays Iron Crosses, swastikas, burning crosses, and nooses. The Good War has become more than a game; "evil has seeped into the real world." Strasser revisits themes from his now-classic The Wave (1981), a fictionalized account of an actual 1967 history class simulation that went too far. The prose is simple, the themes heady, and the conflicts intense, all balanced by an in-your-face encounter with the worst of middle-school life: bullying, cheating, boys spitting loogies onto the ceiling of the "pissorium," and cellphone-obsessed students pursuing their meanness 24/7 on social media. It's a quick read and a thought-provoking reflection of the underbelly of our times.
(Copyright 2021 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
November 15, 2020
A middle school eSports club brings the worst of video gaming's subcultures into the classroom. In poor, mostly White, mostly Christian Ironville, teacher Ms. B starts up an eSports club. The students compete in The Good War, a World War II shooter that pits Axis against Allies. A shifting point of view introduces the misfits who make up the Allies and one of the bullies who make up the Axis. Playacting Nazis creeps into the Axis team's behavior; they wear red T-shirts with an SS-style lightning bolt and make Nazi salutes. In Ironville, lacking people of color and Jews, these seventh graders don't understand their behavior isn't funny. The worst bully, Crosby, meets a friendly older gamer on a Discord channel who feeds him Nazi, racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist hatred between bouts of gameplay. Crosby's radicalization includes profoundly horrific real-world concepts, including an Adolf Hitler slogan and a White nationalist group that actively recruits online. Binaries abound. Explicit refutation of some of the more virulent garbage comes from the Ironville adults while intentional bigotry all originates from non-Ironvillians. None of these kids sees open bigotry at home, and Ms. B. takes it as a given that the eventual racism must have originated online. Tell-not-show narrative and the constantly shifting perspective distance readers from characters. Contemporary referents such as Twitch and Discord are welcome; sadly, they appear alongside rantings about "blue-pill snowflakes" and "Feminazis." Clumsy storytelling with a lesson: Adults must explicitly educate kids about hate groups. (Fiction. 11-13)
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