Personal Review: Soldier Boys By Dean Hughes

Soldier Boys is a novel by Dean Hughes. The story takes place during World War II and tells the story of two teenagers, one American (Spencer Morgan), the other German (Dieter Hendrick), who join their respective armies and fight at the Battle of the Bulge to show their parents that they can do it. Both the boy's families are saddened by their leaving, and have many things in common. Both have a playful little brother and some sisters, as well as concerned parents. When Spencer helps an enemy back to his battalion he dies but Dieter will never forget how he tried to save him.

I read the novel titled Soldier Boys written by Dean Hughes. This book was published in 2001 and is about a couple of boys who wanted to fight in WWII and eventually got their opportunity after a lot of hard work and slowly working their ways up in ranking. This book is a historical fiction book.

“My Son the Marine?” is a short story written by Frank Schaeffer and John Schaeffer about a father’s thoughts on his son enlisting in the military. The story starts off as two Marine recruiters visit the narrator’s home in Salisbury, Massachusetts. The narrator’ wife asks the Marine what John will get out of being a Marine. One of the Marine simply replies, “He’ll be United States Marine, ma’am!” Becoming a Marine will not guarantee college funds, signing bonuses, or great civilian opportunities, but it will help John find standards that had not been lowered (paragraph 5). The narrator goes on to describe the background of his family. He was born in Switzerland, he was the youngest of four children, he was home-schooled, and he was later sent to private schools in England and Wales. After contracting polio, the narrator’s parents became very overprotective of him. He married Genie in 1970 and 10 years later they had their youngest child, John.

In the "Radioactive Boy Scout" the author tells us about David Hahn, a teenage boy who tries to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor in 1994, at the age of 17. He was a scout in the Boy Scouts of America, and secretly conducted experiments in a backyard shed at his mother 's house in Clinton Township, Michigan. Even though the radioactivity given off by his reactor never reached a dangerous state, when he was stopped by the police for another reason they found materials in his vehicle that were dangerous. Ten months later, his mother 's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The non-fiction article, “Children of War” by Arthur Brice is about four children who were forced to flee war and relocate to the U.S. First off, children in warzones are not a big part of what caused the wars, but are still heavily, negatively affected. For many, life was great and jolly for children before times of war, but when war came about it changed their lives, they lived in fear and terror. They lost family, money, and most devastating, their homes. So they were forced to flee, to many countries around the world, but ultimately they came to the United States. At first life was tricky in the U.S, they struggled with language, culture, and homesickness. Although these teens are living in the U.S today, they hope to go back to their

The book A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah portrays seamlessly what the human condition should be. Human condition is the “characteristics, key events, and situations which grow the essentials of human existence, such as birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, everyday conflict, problem solving, and mortality.” Additionally human nature refers to specific characteristics such as morals, attitudes, feelings, thoughts and actions. After reading A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, we have been left with the question, what precisely does Ishmael 's experiences tell us about the human condition? What does this exactly mean to be human? To truly understand this, we have to understand what he was capable of

As a child, I read non-stop. I used to spend entire nights reading, so much so that by the age of 9, I had developed grey circles under my eyes, which I wore like a badge. In school, I would use every free second I had to get just a little closer to finishing whatever book I had on hand. Ms. Carpenter, who always seemed as though she didn’t like teaching very much, frequently yelled at me for keeping my books on my desk so I could get to them quicker whenever I finished my classwork. She insisted that they were a distraction. But I always had a book to read, because every Friday each class walked in a neat line

In elementary school, I loved to read. Writing was not a big deal either due to the fact that we did not have to write four page essays. It was in first grade when I started to like reading. Reading has just been freshly introduced, considering we had only completed one year of school. My teacher always read to us and I wanted to read those books as well. Throughout elementary school I started to read Junie B. Jones books, which were my favorite. All of the books were about a first grade girl and her different adventures. I had always enjoyed reading those books. Each book had a different topic which I would always relate to in some way. Although I liked to read, I did struggle with reading comprehension which made me dislike writing as well. I hated having to read and then go and write about it. To this day, I still do not like reading comprehension, but my feelings toward reading and writing have changed.

Literature was boring to me but until my history professor Mr. Duran told me " if you want to expand your knowledge you have to read books, they are the key of success". Indeed, he was right, so I decided to purchase a kindle from Amazon. Hence, I began reading books from many literary lenses but there was one that brought my attention. It was a book from Justin Torres "We the animals". The book was about how the three brother lost their innocence. They were kids who didn't know what was evil or good. The book was a science

Through the narrative “The Scholarship Boy” I find few turning points that I notice a shift in the demeanor of Richard Rodriguez as well as how I perceive the story. First of all, it is made apparent to me that people acknowledge him for his successes by making remarks such as, “Your parents must be proud” or “How did you manage it? According to the opening paragraphs Rodriguez is seen as a model student. Although this may be true, the first turning point I find suggests otherwise as Rodriguez conveys, “For although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student…Always successful, always unconfident. Exhilarated by my process. Sad.” This quote changed my perspective of Rodriguez because of the negative emotion he expresses toward his family. By the same token, I recall my sister being an outstanding achiever throughout school, yet, she was similarly depressed as well as annoyed towards me and the rest of our family. This flashback assisted me in relating to Rodriguez’s emotions towards his successes. In the same fashion, I am supplied a grasp of his shift in tone and direction in the narrative.

My reading experiences have always been enjoyable. I love to read when I find an interesting book. It’s easy for me to be sucked into a book if the story catches my eye. I mostly like to read teen romance novels. They appeal to me simply because of my interest in a love story. My parents hate buying me books because they know I’ll be finished reading within a week or so. Reading has always been really easy to me. It seems almost natural to be sucked into other worlds. The words start to flow over the pages and suddenly it feels like I’m not even reading anymore. Unless I have to read a book for school or it doesn’t catch my attention, I might have a hard time bringing myself to read it.

When I was a younger I don’t remember if I was read to or not, but I read a lot of books. I enjoy reading books because they allow me to reach new heights in my imagination. At my age many kids say that reading is boring and is for losers. I think it’s cool to read and will continue to read throughout my life. I have read many different types of books from fiction to biographies. The longest book I ever read was a book called Dragon Rider by Cornella Funke. It was five hundred and thirty five pages! When it comes to reading I am a superstar! When I’m reading I am able to get a moral lesson from what I read, so it ends up helping me in the long run of my life

I never liked reading as a kid. Every time a book was assigned and homework was given, I would go straight to spark notes. It always worked out though so it wasn't necessary for me to read them. Every teacher I had said “now class, this will not be on the internet.” But it usually was the first thing that popped up when plugged into the almighty Google.

I wasn't interested in books when I was very young, except for an interest in comic books. Maybe that's because I was never really read to consistently. My mother claims to have read to me some when I was younger, but I don't remember it. Giving birth to five kids in seven years, and having one die at three days old, sort of cut into her time for entertaining me with thrilling renditions of The Cat in the Hat. I had to entertain myself with what I could find, and I picked up some basic reading skills from some of the kid's shows on television in the sixties. When I hit that magical age of six and went to elementary school, I was introduced to the first real books I can remember. There I learned about the world of Alice and Jerry,

Reading was the new outlet for my imagination and the stories I read fascinated me. They weren’t too unlike the scripts of computer games or the own stories I came up with on my own, but books actually had the action and emotional aspects written out. And again, while my peers were reading things about growing up, things that had morals and would teach valuable lessons (I remember one book about a shoplifter who had to do community service at an animal shelter), I read real fiction: Jurassic Park, Dragonriders of Pern, Lord of the Rings… Stuff of fantasy and science-fiction that let my mind stray from reality. Stuff that kept my imagination alive while I was being forced to learn multiplication and the names of countries. Of course, my teachers encouraged me to keep reading, as long as I wasn’t doing the reading in the middle of their lectures. But it wasn’t because of their influence, however, that kept me interested in books. It was because I loved it. It put pictures into my head and made me think. So I kept reading. But even then I knew reading wasn’t enough… Yes, the stories were fascinating, but they weren’t what I wanted. Back then I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but as middle school came to a close, I found it.