Vietnam for Kids

By STEPHANIE ZVIRIN

April 23, 2000 12 AM PT

We saw the picture of the Vietnamese child naked and screaming, running down the road after a napalm strike on her village, and we saw the shots of the last helicopter lifting off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in 1975. Facts about the war and the controversy surrounding it filtered into our homes through television, newspapers and also books: David Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” Wallace Terry’s “Bloods,” Ron Kovic’s “Born on the Fourth of July” and Tim O’Brien’s darkly comic war story “Going After Cacciato,” which won the 1979 National Book Award.

But if these books helped adults understand what was happening, there was little explanation for teenagers, who had seen family members go off to war, some never to return, and had seen the protests and the struggle. Perhaps they read Bobbie Anne Mason’s novel “In Country,” a contemporary story about the war and its aftermath, seen through the eyes of Sam Hughes, a teenager whose father was killed in combat. Given the war’s enormous impact on American attitudes toward government, the military and the media, the dearth of children’s books on the war is both a surprise and a disappointment.

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s and early 1990s that writers of children’s and teen’s books began to focus on the war and its effect on the nation, families and individuals. Still even as we live through this 25th anniversary of the war’s bitter end, children’s books that put the conflict at center stage are few. Over the years, however, a few excellent books for young readers have been written.

Walter Dean Myers was one of the first contributors. He lost his brother in Vietnam in 1968, and 20 years later he wrote “Fallen Angels,” an account of the calamitous events of the 1960s and 1970s, expressly for teenagers. Its probing psychological insights, forthright language and explicit descriptions of war’s brutality paved the way for a new kind of young adult book, more graphic but also more honest than had been written before.

Stephanie Zvirin is the author of “The Best Years of Their Lives: A Resource Guide for Teens in Crisis.” She edits the Books for Youth section of Booklist magazine, the flagship review journal of the American Library Assn.

Myers, a prolific author who has won numerous awards for his children’s and young adult’s books, had, at the time, published stories about the realities of war in magazines for African Americans. When approached by publishers to do a children’s book on war, however, he came away dismayed: Most wanted the treatment to be humorous--as if younger readers shouldn’t be told that war is a tragedy. When Scholastic said he could approach the topic any way he wanted, he agreed to write “Fallen Angels.”

The novel’s first-person narrative unfolds through the perspective of 17-year-old African American Richie Perry, who enlists in the Army more to escape the boredom, poverty and violence of an empty life in Harlem than to defend his country. It’s 1967, and although the newspapers are filled with stories about peace, the fighting goes on. Shortly after his arrival in Vietnam, Richie sees a comrade blown apart by a land mine and realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. It isn’t long before the war has stripped him of his innocence, tested his sanity and courage and brought him face to face with his own mortality.

Myers keeps a tight rein on sensationalism while doing an amazingly frank job of capturing Richie’s jumbled feelings: the visceral horror of the killing and violence, the racism (“How come when you say ‘gooks’ it sounds like ‘nigger’ to me?”), the boredom and the terrifying exhilaration of “waiting to make a move--as if the time would never come soon enough.” Richie’s is a world in which a mother turns a child into a human bomb, drugs and alcohol dull soldiers’ fears and pain and officers sometimes send men into combat to gain credit for themselves.

As the separate and connected stories of the men in Richie’s squad unfold, the political landscape at home shifts: The antiwar sentiment, the peace negotiations and the draft resisters are as much a part of the soldiers’ talk as thoughts about wives and family. Though Richie survives the war, he knows his mother won’t recognize the man who walks in the door with two Purple Hearts, guilt and prayers for the comrades he’s left behind.

Barry Denenberg’s “Voices From Vietnam” takes a different turn. A collection of personal narratives and histories, this is a moving tribute to the men and women who lived the war. As with Myers’ novel, there is no romanticism here. Denenberg has chosen excerpts from mostly adult books--Al Santoli’s “Everything We Had,” Frances FitzGerald’s “Fire in the Lake,” Laura Palmer’s “Shrapnel in the Heart” and many more--to trace the course of the war, from the end of World War II through the strengthening of Vietnamese resistance to the French until the final evacuation of U.S. personnel from Saigon.

Historians, politicians, soldiers, medics, POWs, even Vietnamese civilians weigh in, with Denenberg smoothly knitting their words together. William Calley speaks about his role in the My Lai massacre; antiwar activist Jane Fonda urges Americans not to fight; President Lyndon B. Johnson, “tormented by the course the war had taken,” announces his decision not to run for a second term as president; Ruth Sidisin, U.S. Air Force Nursing Corps, explains what battlefield medicine was like (“not even working with earthquake victims or in the emergency room of a big hospital could equal what I saw in Vietnam”). There’s no better nonfiction book for teenage readers to help them understand the longest war in American history. And Denenberg’s lengthy bibliography (mostly adult books) is a valuable resource.

While Myers and Denenberg’s books deal mainly with the history of the war and the theater of conflict, Theresa Nelson’s book, “And One for All,” depicts some of the ramifications of the war at home, presenting a poignant, unsettling portrait of how the war divided friends and even families. The time is 1966; seventh-grader Geraldine Brennan is half in love with Sam, her older brother Wing’s best friend. Sam and Wing are facing the pressures of high school graduation and concerns about the draft. What’s more, the boys’ very different personalities--Sam is quiet and smart; Wing is caring, maddeningly stubborn and often in trouble at school--and their different attitudes toward the war strain their friendship. Like his father, who served in World War II, Wing puts his faith in the government: “The President’s got the best military minds in the world advising him--we have to trust that they know more than we do whether we understand or not.” But Sam’s father was killed in Korea, and he can’t help wondering if they’re wrong. Geraldine worries as the rift between the boys grows: “Why couldn’t this be a normal war,” she wonders, “like World War II, where everybody cheered for the soldiers?” It’s inevitable that Wing opts for the Marines and Sam chooses the antiwar movement. Must Geraldine pick a side as well?

Ultimately, this is an antiwar book--Wing’s letters home reveal his growing disillusionment with what he sees and learns about Vietnam, and the final scene of the book takes place at a Washington, D.C., peace march through which Nelson deftly demonstrates how easy it is for politics to become personal.

Given the graphic and frightening elements of the Myers, Denenberg and Nelson books, parents may wonder how to introduce younger readers to the war. Is it even appropriate to introduce them to a subject still painful for many adults to deal with? Teaming with picture book artist Ronald Himler, popular children’s book author Eve Bunting found a fine, meaningful way to introduce very young children to the thorny subjects of death and war. “The Wall” was the first picture book to introduce young children to the war, and it did so by way of the Vietnam War Memorial.

Both tender and forthright, the book takes place entirely at the memorial in Washington, D.C., where a little boy and his father have come to pay tribute to a grandfather the child never knew. There’s no attempt to teach a lesson here. Bunting wisely leaves the history for parents to fill in. As the father searches for Grandpa’s name, the little boy looks at the varied objects carefully laid at the foot of the memorial and sees other visitors who have come to pay respects--a young boy with his grandpa; a veteran in a wheelchair, both legs missing; an elderly woman, hugging her husband. The little boy begins to sense what it means to lose a beloved family member to tragedy and how such sadness creates a connection between people.

The boy and his father make a rubbing of Grandpa’s name and leave the boy’s photo under a pile of small stones: “It’s sad here,” says the child. “I know,” says the dad. “But it’s a place of honor. I’m proud that your grandfather’s name is on this wall.” “I am too,” says the boy.

Himler’s watercolor illustrations are just right for the text. In muted tones, they are both affecting and dignified, capturing the deeply felt emotions of the visitors without being overly sentimental.

Sarah Kilborne’s “Leaving Vietnam” shows how the war marked the relationship between a father and his son, but this time they are Vietnamese. Published last year, “Leaving Vietnam” is the best of recent books reconstructing events of the war from the perspective of its refugees. It is perfect for beginning chapter-book readers, with simple language, a straightforward story line, large type and lots of pictures to add appeal.

Kilborne bases the story on the experiences of Tuan Ngo, a young man whom she interviewed several times over a period of four years to complete her research. His story begins in the mid-1970s, as Tuan and his father, dressed in black, “bend down like cranes and go fast into the woods” to board a fishing boat they hope will take them across the dangerous South China Sea to America. Young readers will find the journey scary and exciting. The tiny boat is overfilled with passengers desperate to escape the Viet Cong. It’s cold and wet, the sun won’t go away, there’s not enough to eat or drink and pirates steal what few valuables the people have. Then a miracle happens: The refugees are rescued by a German oil tanker and sent to a camp, where they wait for months before they are finally free.

The sacrifice and struggle underpinning freedom is the theme of Kilborne’ story, which, told in the voice of Tuan Ngo, has a poignant immediacy. Although Melissa Sweet’s illustrations are a bit lightweight given the subject of story, taken with the text they will lead to discussion not only about Vietnam but also about refugees from other parts of the world.

Of course, what all these books have in common, and what makes them successful, is their desire to tell young people the truth about war--any war, at home or somewhere else. It’s this kind of literature that will help children understand the burdensome responsibilities and consequences of war.

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THE WALL

By Eve Bunting

Illustrated by Ronald Himler

Houghton Mifflin:

32 pp., $5.95 paper

LEAVING VIETNAM

The Journey of Tuan Ngo, a Boat Boy

By Sarah Kilborne

Illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Simon & Schuster:

48 pp., $15