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OLDER FICTION
Strasser, Todd

The Good War

192 pp. | Delacorte | January, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-0-593-17365-7 $16.99 | Library ISBN 978-0-593-30780-9 $19.99
(2) YA The school board has cut funding for football at Ironville Middle School, but Ms. B hopes her new eSports club might "give students something else to focus on. ­Something to get excited about." After all, the eight shiny new gaming computers she has gotten through a ­technology grant for low-income schools aren't costing the school anything, and the students are sure to love playing a World War II simulation game pitting the Allies against the Axis. But that game soon spirals out of control. Axis members walk the hallways wearing gray shirts and Iron Crosses and talking in fake German accents. Chat rooms resound with "Long live the Axis. Sieg Heil!" And when Ally member Emma puts on her headphones, she hears sounds of boots marching, crashes of cymbals and drums, and someone (presumably Hitler) giving a passionate speech in German. Her monitor displays Iron Crosses, swastikas, burning crosses, and nooses. The Good War has become more than a game; "evil has seeped into the real world." Strasser revisits themes from his now-classic The Wave (1981), a fictionalized account of an actual 1967 history class simulation that went too far. The prose is simple, the themes heady, and the conflicts intense, all balanced by an in-your-face encounter with the worst of middle-school life: bullying, cheating, boys spitting loogies onto the ceiling of the "pissorium," and cellphone-obsessed students pursuing their meanness 24/7 on social media. It's a quick read and a thought-provoking reflection of the underbelly of our times.
Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2021

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