The Cuban Missile Crisis

Gr 5–8—Each action-packed volume contains three short, graphic-novel-style tales, all colorfully rendered, that portray real events, such as Major Willard Bennett's courageous medevac flight in Vietnam, President Kennedy's meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea, and many other historical events. Relevant encyclopedic entries at the beginning and end of each book provide a historical context to the stories, while a glossary explains specific technical, political, and military terminology. This is a vivid and dramatic depiction of history, rife with explosions, dueling fighter planes, and battlefield sequences. It is important to note that these illustrations involve guns and bullets, and there are bloody images that successfully convey the messiness, violence, and ambiguity of American-Soviet relations. The use of a graphic-novel format, in combination with encyclopedic entries and vocabulary lists, is similar to the "Illustrated History" series (Rourke, 2010). These books, high on action and low on word count, have the potential to reach reluctant readers. An interesting and fast-moving amalgam of nonfiction and sequential art.—Jeffrey Meyer, Mount Pleasant Public Library, IA