Name: Grenade
Author: Alan Gratz

Category: Review

Genres: Middle Grade, World War II, Young Adult

A New York Times bestseller! It's 1945, and the world is in the grip of war. Hideki lives on the island of Okinawa, near Japan. When WWII crashes onto his shores, Hideki is drafted into the Blood and Iron Student Corps to fight for the Japanese army. He is handed a grenade and a set of instructions: Don't come back until you've killed an American soldier. Ray, a young American Marine, has just landed on Okinawa. He doesn't know what to expect -- or if he'll make it out alive. He just knows that the enemy is everywhere. Hideki and Ray each fight their way across the island, surviving heart-pounding ambushes and dangerous traps. But when the two of them collide in the middle of the battle, the choices they make in that instant will change everything. From the acclaimed author of Refugee comes this high-octane story of how fear can tear us apart, and how hope can tie us back together.

Grenade. An interesting look at a historical event. More importantly, it is a look at human nature in wartime, how people get caught up in it and do things they’d never think of doing otherwise. Perhaps that’s part of the horrors, people remembering what they did in those insane times and conditions.

The story follows the struggles of an Okinawan young boy, who overcomes great odds to survive the fighting while remaining true to himself. There is a great deal of death and tragedies in the story and so I wouldn’t recommend it for too young a reader but high school-aged students should read it.

An interesting point of it that I have heard before is when it is mentioned in the book that brave people are not without fear, but rather they are brave in the way they handle their fears.

Grenade

Grenade

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