THE UNTHINKABLE FOR KIDS

THE BUTTER BATTLE BOOK. By Dr. Seuss (Random House: 48 pp., $15.99)

If you were to send thousands of these books to India and Pakistan, you might give offense. But for those of us who don’t understand the subcontinent’s deep divisions, this book draws a useful parallel: The Yooks and Zooks are at war over the issue of whether it is better to eat bread with the buttered side up or down. They engage in a long-running battle, developing more and more sophisticated weapons as they try to outdo the other. We see the tactical foolishness of this as the Yooks and Zooks progress from a slingshot to a Jigger-Rock Snatchem to an Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom-Blitz to the Big-Boy Boomeroo, which would blow all of them into smithereens. We also learn that violence always has a way of escalating to who-knows-what. Here are the good doctor’s last rhymes on the subject: “ ‘Grandpa!’ I shouted ‘Be careful! Oh, gee! / Who’s going to drop it? / Will you? . . . Or will he? . . . / ‘ ‘Be patient,’ said Grandpa. ‘We’ll see / We will see. . . .’ ” (Ages 5 and up)

WHY? By Nikolai Popov (North-South Books: 32 pp., $6.95 paper)

A frog sits peacefully in a meadow. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he is attacked by an umbrella-wielding mouse in a confrontation that quickly turns into a full-scale war. The story is a wordless condemnation of the stupidity of war, engagingly told through Nikolai Popov’s lithe and forceful artwork. As he says in his author’s note at the end of the book, “[I]t seems to me that if children can understand the senselessness of war, if they can see how easily one can be sucked into a cycle of violence, they may become a force for peace in the future. I also hope that adults who share the book with children will reexamine their own thoughts on the futility of war.” (Ages 5-8)

MY HIROSHIMA. By Junko Morimoto (Puffin: 32 pp., $5.99 paper)

On Aug. 6, 1945, author-illustrator Junko Morimoto had a stomachache and stayed home from school. She and her sister were in their room talking when suddenly there was a bright flash and thunderous explosion. When she awoke, her house and all of Hiroshima had been destroyed. Everything was burning. Here in spare, elegant words and pictures are Junko’s memories of her childhood in Hiroshima and a moving account of the terrible aftermath of the bomb. The most poignant passage: “Half a year passed. The students who had survived went back to their schools. From the dirt of the burnt earth I took an aluminum lunch box with burnt, black rice inside. I found the bones of many friends.” (Ages 5-8)

SHIN’S TRICYCLE. By Tatsuharu Kodama . Illustrated by Noriyuki Ando (Walker & Co.: 36 pp., $15.95

This is the true story of Mr. and Mrs. Nobuo Tetsutani, who lost three children in the atomic blast. Two daughters, Michiko and Yoko, were buried beneath the rubble of their home. But at the time of the blast, their 4-year-old son, Shin, had been outside on his tricycle with his best friend, Kimi (the little girl next door). After the blast, Kimi is dead, but little Shin is just barely alive. Yet he asks about his trike. Later that night, he dies and is buried with the remains of the other children in the Tetsutanis’ garden. Shin’s beloved tricycle is buried with them too. Many years later, when the Tetsutanis gave the children a proper burial in a cemetery, they found the battered remains of Shin’s tricycle and gave it to the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, where you can see it today. The straightforward text and dramatic paintings of this book bring you close enough to see that the heartbreak of war never dies. (Ages 7-10)

HIROSHIMA NO PIKA. By Toshi Maruki (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard: 48 pp., $16)

This is a retelling by famed artist Toshi Maruki of a mother’s account of what happened to her family during the Hiroshima blast. More than any other picture book, this one seems to capture the brutal, evil horror that was inflicted on Hiroshima on that midsummer morning at the end of the war. But through its artwork, it captures--in an almost monumental way--the human will to survive and the devotion of family members to one another. There is nobility here amid the suffering. This book offers a fascinating, unsanitized blend of beauty and ugliness, and some startling images result: Years after the blast, “Mii complains that her head itches, and her mother parts her hair, sees something shiny and pulls it out of her scalp with a pair of tweezers. It’s a sliver of glass, embedded when the bomb went off years ago, that has worked its way to the surface.” (Ages 7 and up)

SADAKO AND THE THOUSAND PAPER CRANES. By Eleanor Coerr . Illustrated by Ronald Himler (Bantam: 64 pp., $3.95 paper)

This is a true story about a little girl from Hiroshima named Sadako Sasaki. In 1955, 10 years after exposure to radiation from the bomb, she got very sick with the “atom bomb disease.” This book dramatizes Sadako’s effort to live. When Sadako’s best friend visits the hospital, she brings along a folded paper crane and tells Sadako a legend: If you fold 1,000 paper cranes, you will live a long life. So Sadako begins folding the paper cranes, bravely keeping at it through both the good and bad days. But she’s only able to fold 644 cranes before she dies. Shocked at her death, Sadako’s schoolmates collected money to raise a monument in her memory. Today a life-size statute of Sadako holding a golden paper crane stands in Hiroshima as a memorial to all the children who died because of the atom bomb. Each year, children from around the world send as many as 400 million paper cranes to Hiroshima, where they are hung in thick layers below Sadako’s statue. (Ages 8-10)

NOBODY WANTS A NUCLEAR WAR. By Judith Vigna (Albert Whitman & Co.: 40 pp., $13.95)

When a mother discovers her small son and daughter have built a shelter to protect themselves from nuclear war, she explains that adults all over are working very hard to make the world safe to grow up in. Do you believe it? If so, this book’s handsome drawings and gentle text may make it a useful tool for quieting children’s fears. (Ages 6-9)

HIROSHIMA. By Laurence Yep (Scholastic: 64 pp., $2.99 paper)

Based on the stories of real survivors, this fictional account describes the effect that the dropping of the atomic bomb has on Sachi, a young girl who suffered terrible scars on her face and arms from the burns she suffered in the Flash. Sachi became one of the Hiroshima Maidens--25 women selected in 1949 in a Japanese American effort to enable some victims of the blast to receive free corrective surgery in the United States. Over 18 months in 1955-56, 138 operations were performed on the 25 women. It was a long, painful process. One Maiden died, but the others saw the surgeries through. Most of the surgeries were successful. Back in Japan, however, there was outrage that so much money was spent on so few survivors and, because of the controversy, no more survivors came to the U.S. Instead, the Japanese built special hospitals and began passing laws to help the bomb victims. (Ages 8-12)

WOLF OF SHADOWS. By Whitley Strieber (Alfred A. Knopf / Sierra Club Books: 128 pp., $9.99)

This is the book most purely about survival. It is fascinating because the story is told entirely from the perspective of Wolf of Shadows, a great dark wolf living in the north woods. Alert to scents, sounds and sights, Wolf of Shadows tells the story of how, in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, he and a human woman form a mutual bond that allows their families to survive as a single pack. The wolf had been an outcast who, recognizing the coming peril, assumed leadership of the pack. The woman was a scientist who had become familiar with the woods and its wolf pack through a research project the previous summer. She had flown into the area in a float plane with her two children, one of whom was seriously injured in the blast. When the injured child dies and the woman’s plane and supplies are stolen by a group of idiot hunters, the woman and her surviving daughter are forced to join the wolves. The nuclear winter is dark, cold and cruel. The pack begins a long southerly trek in search of warmth and light. Through loyalty and cooperation, the pack of wolves and people survive. (Ages 10 and up)

Z FOR ZACHARIAH. By Robert C. O’Brien (Macmillan: 256 pp., $4.50 paper)

Seemingly the only person left alive after a nuclear war, 16-year-old Ann Burden is startled to see a man arrive in her valley. He arrives on foot, pulling a wheeled cart and wearing a hooded green plastic suit of his own invention. It has protected him from radiation. After traveling for hundreds of miles, he is amazed to discover this sheltered, unpolluted oasis of lush farmland, a small, fertile valley with its own weather. Ann is hidden away, observing him through binoculars to see whether the man is a potential enemy or a friend. The man takes Geiger-counter readings and then strips off his suit. He then makes a mistake: He bathes in a contaminated stream. When he becomes seriously ill from radiation poisoning, Ann comes out of hiding to nurse him back to health. This is her mistake, as she soon discovers. He is intent on taking the valley--and her--as his very own. The more she tries to preserve her personal freedom, the more extreme and violent his behavior becomes. We’re reminded that the cause of war itself is in the human heart. (Ages 12 and up)

CHILDREN OF THE DUST. By Louise Lawrence (Harper & Row: 192 pp., out of print)

With her father away, 8-year-old Catherine and the rest of her family are in a sealed room when the unthinkable happens. There is a rumble in the distance, then a great wave of sound that comes sweeping toward them, engulfing the children’s screams and all else in its path. Radioactive ash seeps into the room through an open chimney and poisons everyone but Catherine, who lives in a blanket tent she’s created under the table. Without power, her now-dying brother complains that you can’t do anything much in the dark, to which Catherine replies, “Blind people can. . . . If we were blind we could do most things too. We could find your Tonka truck . . . and my Barbie doll.” Because of this creative bent in her thinking, Catherine will survive and will help start a new race of people. Louise Lawrence tells the story of three generations of Catherine’s family as they create, out of the radioactive dust, a new world based on decency, freedom and cooperation--a new world much better than the old. (Ages 12 and up)

--COMPILED BY DAN DAILEY