Objectives of this WebSite

v     to introduce first-hand accounts written by children living in the midst of war and conflict throughout the twentieth century and to discuss the content of these writings as they reflect childhood “dreams of peace”

v     to introduce non-fiction works written by adults as they have describe their childhood years spent during wartime or conflict

v     to consider the impacts, both physical and emotional, of wartime experiences on children’s adults lives

v     to consider specifically the intense need to dream of peace by children and young people living in turmoil—to understand how these “dreams of peace” sustained them

v     to provide lesson plan ideas for the classroom use of the materials discussed, both as part of the study and use of first-person narrative writing as well as to assist in the study of history

v     to consider ways in which contemporary children and adolescents may be encouraged in their own reflective writing through the examples introduced

Children and adolescents have written about their feelings during times of war and conflict in an effort to share their fears, their worries, and, most especially, their dreams of peace.  Such dreams have been expressed with remarkable intensity in three wartime collections of children’s writing—UNICEF’s publication I Dream of Peace:  Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia, in … I Never Saw Another Butterfly:  Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942-44, recently expanded from its original Prague edition by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and in Children of ‘The Troubles’:  Our Lives in the Crossfire of Northern Ireland.  On the individual level, Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, written in Amsterdam during the second World War and Zlata Filopovic’s diary of A Child’s Life in Sarajevo are outstanding examples of the optimism and hope for peace that are evident in two adolescent girls facing lives in hiding and in the midst of war.  Written after the fact in adulthood, but with equal intensity, authors have also provided strong first-hand accounts such as Yoshiko Uchida’s  The Invisible Thread:  An Autobiography, which followed her very popular fictionalized Journey Home, and Ken Mochizuki’s Baseball Saved Us, stories of families interned with thousands of other Japanese-Americans living in the U.S. during World War II, and Aranka Siegal’s Newbery award-winning account of her childhood in Hungary during the Holocaust, Upon the Head of the Goat:  A Childhood in Hungary, followed by Grace in the Wilderness:  After the Liberation 1945-1948, as Siegal continued her story.  Ji Li Jiang has recounted in Red Scarf Girl:  A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution how the upheaval of Chairman Mao’s leadership impacted her and her family, ultimately forcing her to decide if she would renounce her father and testify against him for the Community Party.  While each of these works focuses on the reactions of children and adolescents to war, overwhelmingly they all contain memories of former times of peace and hopes for a return to that very pleasant condition.

What can we learn about war, about young people, and about ourselves from these individual and collective accounts?  In sharing these stories with students in our classrooms, how can we help them to understand the need for peace and hope that lies buried in the young lives portrayed so well in the works studied?  What can we learn about the human spirit that so inspired these young authors to persevere in their “dreams of peace”?  Would we or our students respond in like manner?  Would we exhibit love and hope, or would we instead display hate and despair in response to war?  The contemporary reader, well aware of Anne Frank’s ultimate death at fifteen in Bergen-Belsen, cannot help but respond in awe at her belief, as stated in her diary, that people are really good at heart.  Do these accounts change our understanding of ourselves and of history?  Do they encourage us to pursue peace, rather than war, at all costs? 

As a final work to consider, Margaret Wild and Julie Vivas’ picture book Let the Celebrations Begin, while not a first person account, is based on the historical reminder left by “a small collection of stuffed toys . . . made by Polish women in Belsen for the first children’s party held after the liberation.”  These toys were made in secret, at night, from scraps of clothing so that the children in this concentration camp could celebrate the anticipated arrival of freedom brought by the approaching Allied Forces.  Again, what made these women so want to ensure a sense of joy and hope, a return to normality and peace, in these young children?  And, ultimately, how can we assist our students as they consider hatred, discrimination, and the resulting war and conflict they see in the world around them, to help them actively dream and strive for peace? 

Teaching Ideas for Recommended Literature

Credits for images:  http://members.tripod.com/~chr4/doves.htm