Depression and World War II Reading

 

We had a great time studying the depression around here, mainly because my kids were all captivated by Kit Kittredge.  We watched the movie together, which was surprisingly fun to watch and included a star-studded adult cast.  My kids were particularly interested in the lives of hoboes, and in "hobo code."  The supplementary book Welcome to Kit's World was also a good resource.

We also read and enjoyed Rudy Rides the Rails and Potato, and looked at the pictures in Russell Freedman's Children of the Great Depression.  I remember listening to my Grandparents talk about growing up in the depression as a kid and finding it fascinating, too.

Studying World War II with little ones is challenging.  Much of it is just so horrifying, it is really beyond their scope of understanding.  We read two picture books about organized resistance against the Nazis: The Cats in Krazinsky Square, by Karen Hesse, and The Butterfly, by Patricia Polacco.  Both were good and age appropriate.










The Molly series from American girls talks about life on the home front.  We also read Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry, an excellent story about the successful evacuation of almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark in 1943. 



I also had my 8-year-old read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a young Japanese girl who gets leukemia in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima.  She was very, very sad about the ending!  Still, it is a classic.

What about you, what have you been reading?