The Always War (197 Pages)

If you're not familiar with Margaret Peterson Haddix, and if you are a middle school teacher, this is an opportunity to meet this wonderful author. I first read her book Among the Hidden (the first in the series The Shadow Children) and I was hooked. The premise for that series is that government has passed a law allowing parents to only have one child. (Sound familiar?) This is a story of a family that has a second child and does not destroy him, but hides him. It is a good read, and very appropriate for middle schoolers OR for high school kids who have not been hooked into reading! If they read the first book, they will probably be hooked to read the others. But enough of that. Haddix often writes in the "what if ?" genre. (I made it up, but it has become one of my favorites) "What if? examples would be stories like "What if all the birds in the world turned against humans for caging them and furiously attacked? This latest Haddix book is short, but the "What if?" may not be such a stretch of the imagination, unfortunately, to your students. What if all you have ever known was war? What if all your parents and grandparents had ever known was war. Now here comes the twist. What if there really was no war, and there had not been a war for a LONG time? It's a good read.