Blog tour, book review: Back to Bataan by Jerome Charyn

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Author: Jerome Charyn
Title: Back to Bataan
Series: None
Genre:  Historical young adult
Purchase: B&N | Amazon
My rating: 4 stars

About the book:

New York City, 1943. War is raging in Europe and the Pacific, while Jack Dalton is stuck attending Dutch Masters Day School. What Jack really wants is to enlist in the army, to fight...
Everything changes when Coco, Jack's "fiancee," throws him over for one of his classmates. Jack sees red and does something drastic. Then he runs away. Hiding out in a nearby park, Jack joins ranks with a group of vagrants and is soon under the sway of a man called the Leader, an ex-convict who is as articulate and charismatic as he is dangerous. The Leader turns Jack's world upside down. To put things right, Jack must prove himself a braver soldier than he ever imagined.

My thoughts:
When I began reading this book I was thinking that this book was not all that good. But then I started to realize that I was looking at it all wrong. This book was not what I thought it would be. It was not the usual YA that I usually read and so it would be wrong to judge it by that. So I changed my "glasses" and started over and what I found was actually really good. This book is more of a serious historical young adult and it is a book who will leave you in thought. I actually think this book would be a perfect read in school. You know one of those obligated books you have to read in school and then discuss in class. I think this book would be perfect for that because this book contains so much worth to discuss. Bravery, compassion, morality, betrayal, love, world war 2 from an american perspective and so much more

Young Jack Dalton is so grown up for such a young boy and he is very troubled by the death of his father and the fact that his final resting place is in a mass grave in Bataan. This is on young Jacks mind a lot and it deeply affect his daily life. This book is about his struggle to fit in this world and find his place in a world in war.

This was a very serious book and no laughing matter. I highly recommend it to all young adults and grown ups. This book will make you think. And when was it ever a bad thing to use ones mind to think?

Jerome Charyn's Bio:

Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.”

New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”

Since 1964, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.

Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.

Back to Bataan web site:
http://backtobataan.blogspot.com/  
Back to Bataan Twitter hashtag:
#BackToBataanBack to Bataan GoodReads page:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13613896-back-to-bataanJerome Charyn's Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/jerome.charynJerome Charyn's Twitter:
http://twitter.com/jeromecharynJerome Charyn's Website:
http://www.jeromecharyn.com/Jerome Charyn's GoodReads:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/53408.Jerome_Charyn
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