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Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780439916240
ISBN number: 0439916240
Label: Scholastic Press
Manufacturer: Scholastic Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: 2008-04
Publishing house: Scholastic Press
Age index: Young Adult
Sale Popularity Level: 14405
Studio: Scholastic Press
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Product Description:
Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But the young men and women in the military's Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for it: WAR.
In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers looks at a contemporary war with the same power and searing insight he brought to the Vietnam war of his classic, FALLEN ANGELS. He creates memorable characters like the book's narrator, Birdy, a young recruit from Harlem who's questioning why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman who just wants to make it back to Georgia and open a club;
and a whole unit of other young men and women and drops them incountry in Iraq, where they are supposed to help secure and stabilize Iraq and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. The young civil affairs soldiers soon find their definition of 'winning' ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like 'survival' and 'despair.'
Caught in the crossfire, Myers' richly rendered characters are just beginning to understand the meaning of war in this powerful, realistic novel of our times.
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Rated by buyers 
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What would it feel like to be fighting for your country --- and your life --- right after graduating from high school? Get a close-up view of the beginning of the current Iraq War in SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH, another powerful novel by Walter Dean Myers. Against his father's wishes, Robin Perry chooses the military over going to college in 2003. He finds himself near the border of Iraq, struggling to understand who he is and what he is doing there.
Jonesy, a soldier from Georgia, is Robin's best friend in the military. He plans to open a blues club someday and compares everything to music, but for now they have each other's back. Robin is not too sure about Marla, who dubs him "Birdy" and seems to enjoy teasing him endlessly. They, along with Captain Coles, are assigned a Humvee for their work on the Civilian Affairs team. In between missions they enjoy each others' company over meals and in the safe zones during downtime. They even try to play soccer against some Iraqis.
The Civilian Affairs soldiers are supposed to help the people living in a war zone by providing them with medicine, water, or assistance in developing a new independent political system after Saddam Hussein is gone. But the Rules of Engagement change frequently, and Robin and his fellow soldiers learn that some civilians are from different warring tribes or simply want Americans dead.
When some people in an ambulance try to kill Robin and his comrades, Robin realizes he can no longer relax anywhere. Another time he sees an officer from his company killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) set off from a cell phone. Pulling that man from the remains of his vehicle haunts Robin's thoughts for a long time afterwards.
Soldiers who Robin talks to one day are kidnapped (or worse) the next. The author refers briefly in the story to Jessica Lynch and her comrades who were abducted. Details are well researched and recognizable, and readers will relate to the young soldiers. Through translators and contact with locals, Robin struggles to understand the way of life for the people in this sometimes beautiful, sometimes war-torn land.
At one hospital, Robin is forced to act quickly to save a female Captain. With each new experience, he feels he has become a different person, doing things he never would have imagined doing back in Harlem. As a result of their good work, Robin's unit is asked to help with a dangerous and highly political assignment. It changes everyone involved.
Walter Dean Myers draws readers right into his story with alternating beautiful scenery, searing emotions and life-threatening situations. Loosely set as a sequel to his notable FALLEN ANGELS, in which Robin's Uncle Richie fought in the Vietnam War, SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH offers an unforgettable look at the war being fought by many young adults who will never return home.
--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio
Rated by buyers -
If you really want to understand what went wrong with the war in Iraq, look no further than "Sunrise Over Fallujah" by Walter Dean Myers.
The very first three months of the war are viewed through the eyes of Private Robin Perry - aka Birdy - who is part of a Civil Affairs Unit. The men and women in Birdy's unit are well-trained, yet ill-prepared for what awaits them on the battlefield. In the beginning their mission is to follow the invasion forces, and make contact with the Iraqi people to begin building a democracy. Yet as the weeks progress, their unit keeps getting pushed further into the combat zone and deeper into danger. All too quickly they go from playing soccer to win over Iraqi youths to combat in the streets.
From Marla-the-gutsy-girl-gunner to Jonesy, the blues fanatic philosopher, Birdy is flanked by a colorful and diverse bunch of characters from all walks of life, which is so typical of the military experience. Their story is an important one because it shows what happens when good, brave young people are tasked on an impossible mission with a woefully in adequate understanding of the language and culture of the region, and where the rules of engagement (ROE) change from one day to the next.
While some readers might find the dialogue a bit tame - perhaps even unrealistic - it's clear Myers chose a style that makes this book palatable for the classroom, and suitable for readers as young as 10 years old.
This book is not an escape into a fantasy world of wizards and dragons, it is a jolt of reality about the war our children have already inherited.
However, "Sunrise Over Fallujah" is one voice - one perspective on this war. Surely we need other voices and more perspectives. I hope this will be the very first of many books for teens about a war that has been waged for a third of their lives.
Rated by buyers 
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If you like war crimes, you will like this book. Because there is no doubt that Fallujah was an American war crime, far worse than the My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War. General Ricardo Sanchez, in his memoir of his service as one of George W. Bush's generals in Iraq, records Bush directing his military advisors on how to proceed at Fallujah: "Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!" Fallujah, remember, was a city like one of our cities, with thousands of men, women, and children going about their daily lives. Sanchez estimates that at least three-fourths of the city was destroyed, though he does not estimate how many civilians were killed. If Bush directed him to "wipe them out," it's hardly necessary to count them.
Neither does Myers, who never gives a face to any of the Iraqis who are killed by the hero of his book.
That's may not even be the worst part: the hero of this book, a young African-American, turns his back on his father's desire for him to go to college so that he can enlist in George W. Bush's aggressive war on the Iraqis, who had the misfortune to live on one of the largest reserves of oil in the world. Myers' hero, like Myers himself, drinks the Bush Kool-Aid and assumes he is killing Muslims so that they will accept democracy. If not, kill 'em all.
Myers' message is that you should forego college to enlist in the crusade to kill Muslims in the Middle East. For this, he has been effusively praised in tne New York Times Book Review. I just wonder if the Times would have been so enthusastic if Myers' message had been directed toward anyone other than African-American young males.
Rated by buyers 
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How far should one go, to offer the benefit of the doubt? At what point does that generosity, that trust in another's basic capability despite evidence to the contrary, become a sign of foolishness on the part of the giver, the one offering the trust? When does trust become a mistake?
I want to offer Walter Dean Myers the benefit of the doubt. The man has won multiple awards, writing successful and beloved young adult fiction for better than three decades; I want to believe that his most recent novel, Sunrise over Fallujah, is actually more than what it seems. I want to believe that it is a poignant depiction of the meaninglessness of war, that it is an endeavor to show, through a realistic account of the experiences and interactions of a confused and shallow group of young soldiers during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that the men and women of the US military are brave but gullible, and have been deceived, as has the nation, by an avaricious and intemperate leadership. I want to think that the book is intentionally bad, so that it could make an elegantly subtle point about a bad war fought for bad reasons by generally good people. I want to believe that, but I think if I did, it would cross the line into foolishness.
No, sadly, I think this is just a bad book. I think Mr. Myers, who has two children in the US military, wanted to show that American soldiers truly are heroes despite the fact that so little has been actually achieved in this pointless Rube Goldberg-meets-Machiavelli debacle that has sapped our nation's strength, and he couldn't do it. I think he wanted to make these soldiers seem to be doing the right thing, but since the reality -- which he certainly has an intimate awareness of; I have no doubt that this novel is realistic in its broad strokes and in its military aspects -- is just the opposite, he was forced to bend over too far backwards, and the work suffered for it. He went too far in giving the US military the benefit of the doubt, in other words. And here's what happened.
The soldiers never actually do anything of import; there is no clear plan of attack, no apparent goals, and only the briefest nod toward a larger meaning to their actions. The characters comprise a Civil Affairs unit, soldiers whose mission is to win the "hearts and minds" of the conquered Iraqis; thus they are not generally involved in combat, but are supposed to make connections, to show the Iraqi people the human face of the US military. However, since the novel was set (rather short-sightedly, I think) during the actual invasion and subjugation of Iraq in the spring of 2003, there was really very little this unit could be shown doing in pursuit of their mission; thus the characters are forced to observe that they are being ill-used by their commanders, as this non-aggressive unit is asked, again and again, to take part in actual combat situations. When they are not involved in these, or in rather pointless attempts to win hearts and minds (a phrase that is grotesquely overused in the novel, and which I want to believe was intended sardonically, but don't, as it wasn't) that cannot escape the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- if these American soldiers are playing soccer with villagers, while those American soldiers are slaughtering Iraqis with airstrikes a few hundred miles away, could there really be any progress toward trust and goodwill? -- the characters are forced to spend much of their time watching television or puttering around the base. The characters are sadly one-dimensional, and often confusing; Mr. Myers was limited by his obvious pro-military bias, and his attempts to keep the book clean for young adult consumption, and so none of the soldiers are particularly violent or aggressive or hateful towards either the Iraqis or their commanders, and none of them curse or drink or smoke or leer after women. These, then, are not like any soldiers I have ever known or read about. Worst of all, the book was simply boring to read: the characters are dull and unbelievable, the action is too quick and sporadic, the intended symbolism is both too vague and too heavy-handed to make any meaningful points. Even the writing is poor: the dialogue sounds like an over-the-hill hack trying to sound young and hip for the WB, with occasional uses of slang such as "gangsta lean" and the ubiquitous interjection "yo," but the jokes aren't funny, the conversations are stilted, unrealistic, and overly abrupt, and the inner thoughts of the narrator are as confused as the author obviously was, trying to make a bad war sound like a good one, trying to make a foolish young man sound wise, trying to make a confused and chaotic situation sound controlled and meaningful.
It just can't be done. Mr. Myers shouldn't have tried.
Rated by buyers -
The Iraq War, in the news now for years, is the focus of SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH, the latest book by veteran YA author Walter Dean Myers. He has written other war stories, but this newest one expresses the controversy and mixed emotions Iraq has generated among so many.
Robin Perry, aka Birdy, has made the decision to enlist. Certain members of his family have expressed their concern and even disapproval of Robin's decision to serve. Through occasional letters to family members, readers learn about many of Robin's wartime experiences.
As part of a unit assigned to handle civil matters with the Iraqi people, Robin and his fellow soldiers still see all angles of military action. The endless lines of army and marine vehicles traveling toward Baghdad, the choking sand storms, the frightening IED explosions, and grieving soldiers and civilians all combine to illustrate the horrors of war.
Robin's feelings about the senselessness of the war are clearly expressed. As the events of his tour of duty unfold, he realizes if asked whether the Americans were winning or losing, he would find the question unanswerable. The promise of a quick return home for the troops turns into delay after delay as it becomes obvious that Saddam's reign may have ended, but many more deep-seated problems exist in war-torn Iraq.
Although the story of SUNRISE OVER FALLUJAH is a mere glimpse of the action through the eyes of few, Myers has created a chance for teens to learn about a war that has filled their days much as the Vietnam War became part of the lives of teens some thirty years ago.
Reviewed Author name: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"
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