A Boy No More FROM THE PUBLISHER
After witnessing the USS Arizona sink in Pearl Harbor -- with his father aboard -- fifteen-year-old Adam Pelko, along with his mother and young sister, moves from Hawaii to California. Without his dad, facing a new school and new surroundings is hard enough, but then Adam's best friend, Davi Mori, writes from Hawaii asking for help in finding his father. Davi and his family are Japanese American, and his father has been arrested and is imprisoned somewhere in the United States.
What is Adam to do? Can he risk traveling to Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp, and asking questions? At a time when the nation is threatened and all foreigners are viewed with suspicion, who can Adam trust?
In this riveting follow-up to his acclaimed book A Boy at War, Harry Mazer explores questions of friendship and loyalty against the backdrop of World War II, a time when boys had to grow up fast.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Adam Pelko returns in A Boy No More by Harry Mazer, a follow-up to A Boy at War. PW called the first book "a vivid account of the [Pearl Harbor] attack and subtle suggestions of the complexities of Japanese-American relations." Adam, his mother and his sister move to California, and Adam receives a letter from a friend, asking Adam to deliver a letter to an internment camp in nearby Fresno, where the friend's father has been taken. He agrees to help, despite a tide of anti-Japanese sentiment. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Children's Literature - Quinby Frank
In this sequel to A Boy at War, young Adam Pelko and his family are trying to put their lives back together in California after Adam's father has been killed at Pearl Harbor. Adam receives a letter from Davi, his Japanese-American friend from Hawaii, asking Adam to deliver a letter to Davi's father, who, it turns out, has been sent to the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar. Adam must struggle with his mother's anti-Japanese-American prejudice when she forbids him to help his friend, and he must decide where his true loyalties lie. While not as action-packed as A Boy at War, this book effectively presents Adam's growing maturity as he struggles with moral dilemmas. While the book stands on its own, a richer appreciation of Adam's developing character and motivations would be gained from reading the earlier book. A few elements of the plot strain credulity. For example, Davi appears almost supernaturally out of the dust at Manzanar. Secondary characters are not particularly well-developed. Adam's mother is somewhat wooden, and Davi is a rather shadowy figure. Historical notes and documents at the end of the book are interesting. The book would be useful for a curriculum studying the Japanese internment camps because Mazer clearly presents the rampant anti-Japanese furor at the time, and the harsh conditions at Manzanar. For other books on this topic, see Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston. 2004, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, Ages 8 to 12.
School Library Journal
Gr 5-9-Adam Pelko's father was killed in Pearl Harbor when the USS Arizona was bombed. Now, the boy, his mother, and sister have moved from Hawaii to California in the midst of America's involvement in World War II. He receives a letter from his Japanese-American friend, Davi Mori, in which Davi tells him that his father is being held in an internment camp in California and asks for Adam's help in finding him. The teen struggles with loyalty to his friend and disobeying his late father's wishes and his mother's determination to keep him from getting involved. In this fast-paced book, readers see the loyalty and risks that must sometimes be taken for friendship. Although this book can stand alone, those who read A Boy at War (S & S, 2001) will have a greater understanding of Adam's friendship and the dilemma he faces.-Denise Moore, O'Gorman Junior High School, Sioux Falls, SD Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
In wartime, should a person help a friend whose parents are immigrants from an enemy nation? That's the dilemma Adam Pelko has to deal with when he gets a letter from his Japanese-American friend Davi Mori. Adam watched his father's ship go down during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and now lives in California with his mother and sister. The letter asks the still grieving Adam, who is struggling to cope with a new school, additional family responsibilities, and a tough part-time job, to deliver a note to a relative whom Davi hopes can find his father, confined in a California internment camp. In this initially bracing, though ultimately unpersuasive, sequel to A Boy at War (2001), Adam surmounts numerous obstacles, including the opposition of his mother to help his friend. But under the weight of his family, work, school, and a tentative romance with a slightly older girl, the core and newly resonant issue of knowing when and if loyalty to friend and country contradict, loses its focus and urgency. (Fiction. 10-14)
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