This year, 2025, we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. There are many stories of the war and that era, and some of them were meant for children.
My recently published book, Children's Wartime Adventure Novels: The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II, has received the following review from Publishers Weekly magazine:
"Lynch illuminates a fascinating, little-studied chapter of publishing history in this study of exactly what the title suggests: World War II adventure novels for young American readers, printed during—and in a few cases before—U.S. involvement in the war itself, in which protagonists in their late teens and early 20s set aside the anxieties of youth to do their part to stomp out fascism. In title after title, pilots and soldiers (the men, mostly) and nurses, reporters, WACs, WASPS, WAVES, and more (the women) evince courage, endurance, dedication to the cause, and a savvy sense for identifying fifth columnists. Lynch celebrates the novels’ sense of “spirited adventure” and ethos of “patriotic self-sacrifice” while digging into thorny questions of propaganda and indoctrination, including racial and ethnic stereotyping. Declares a radioman in Gregory Duncan’s Dick Donnelly of the Paratroops, judiciously quoted by Lynch, “When I shoot at the enemy, I’m not shootin’ at any one person. I’m just shootin’ at an idea I hate, an idea that will ruin the whole world if it isn’t stopped.”
Lynch writes with infectious enthusiasm for the subject, soaring through detailed summaries of the stories of dozens of books like Red Randall at Pearl Harbor, Nancy Blake, Copywriter, and the surprisingly grim nurse adventure Ann Bartlett at Bataan, which is frank about wartime surgery: “a tattered mass of flesh and bone.” Especially engaging are Lynch’s considerations of the differences between the novels with girl heroes—these stories of the “protectors of the homefront” sometimes boasted career advice and a “surprisingly feminist spark of independence and derring-do”—and the high-flying, battle-oriented novels starring boys.
While Lynch is always engaging, the many summaries can get repetitive, and readers wish for more insight into these books’ creation, sales, and cultural impact. Late chapters surveying questions of patriotism and stereotypes across a host of books, though, offer continual revelations and insights, a rich contribution to the study of American literature and propaganda. These books deserve serious study.
Takeaway: Fascinating study of WWII teen adventure novels and the American character."
You can get your copy in paperback (ISBN 9798330314942) or hardcover (ISBN 79-8-3303-1413-3) from Ingram.
You can get your copy in eBook, paperback, or hardcover from Amazon here.
Or eBook and paperback from Barnes & Noble, or eBook from a variety of online shops including Apple and Kobo here.
Or eBook from my own shop here.
I'd love to hear your review.
