Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
The Attack on Pearl Harbor
Illustrator: Bob Lentz
Nonfiction Graphic Novel Series
For ages 8 to 12
Capstone Press, 2006 ISBN: 978-0736868723
There had been talk in Washington about a possible Japanese attack on American military targets but no one really took what was being said seriously. Surely the Japanese would never dare do such a think and yet early on a quiet and beautiful Sunday morning on December 7th, 1941 the Japanese did in fact launch an attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Everyone was so sure that the Japanese would never attack that spotters who saw the oncoming Japanese planes on their radar screens insisted that the planes that they were seeing had to be American. Even after bombs began to drop on the ships in Pearl Harbor, there were some who were sure that the whole thing was just a military exercise, a drill. They quickly found out how wrong they were as bomb after bomb fell and as the ships on Battleship Row began to burn, explode, and sink.
Using bright and action-packed comic book style illustrations, the creators of this book have managed to capture the complete unexpectedness of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Readers quickly see that the Americans were caught completely by surprise and that the situation was a desperate one. Readers also come to understand that it was just sheer luck that the American aircraft carriers were not in the harbor at the time of the attack and this meant that the large ‘flattops’ would be able to begin the fight against Imperial Japan in the near future.
At the back of the book readers will find a “More about Pearl Harbor” section, a glossary, a list of Internet Sites, a “Read More” section, a bibliography, and an index.
This is one of the titles in the “Graphic Library” Series.
