Book Buzz: War Games by Alan Gratz
Those three years of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade are a time of learning who you are as a person. They’re still kids. They play kickball, pull pranks on each other. But they’re also having their first serious relationships, starting to drink or experiment with drugs, questioning their place in the larger world….I want to teach empathy. I want people to understand the viewpoints of others, and that we are better together than apart. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that 10 years ago. It took me writing a few books—and coming to that theme every time, naturally, as a writer—to understand.
― Alan Gratz, Interview with Scott Simon, Publishers Weekly
What booksellers are saying about War Games
-
I read this on my way to Berlin, and everything came to life! We may have been taught about the Holocaust, but what was the significance of how everything came to be? A stark warning not to repeat history. This book delves deep and gives a true glance at all the little things people may have missed in the rise to Hitler’s control. Should be read by everyone.
― David Lucey, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina | BUY
As a former tour guide in Berlin, I was impressed with the research and detail that Gratz has put into this gripping and thought-provoking thriller. We are plunged into the heart of Nazi Germany through the eyes of Evie, a US gymnast at the infamous 1936 Berlin Games, who makes both friends and enemies, both of whom gradually reveal to her the thinness of the veneer of respectability which the games have given Germany. A gold heist is the vehicle for a deeper delve into questions of morality, sacrifice and teamwork, and a surprisingly gripping vehicle too. Should keep any reader on the edge of their seat, and keen to learn more.
― Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana | BUY- Loved this one. A heist, a girl, international characters and some insight into what was going on before the war. And I learned about Black Sunday!
― Wilson Robbins, Novel. in Memphis, Tennessee | BUY
About Alan Gratz
Alan Gratz is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several highly acclaimed books for young readers, including Heroes: A Novel of Pearl Harbor, Two Degrees, Ground Zero, Allies, Grenade, Refugee, Projekt 1065, Prisoner B-3087, Code of Honor, and Captain America: The Ghost Army, an original graphic novel. Alan lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest. Look for him online at alangratz.com.
Book Buzz: War Games by Alan Gratz Read More »
I first saw a bog body in the British Museum, and I just thought, How amazing. This is a real person who lived and breathed 1000s of years ago, and I can still see him, and we can learn so much about him and his life, from his body and from studying him. And his people buried him in this place where I think they knew that he would be preserved, and I can imagine them, you know, hoping that maybe we would understand them. One day, I visited the bog where he was found. I really learned so much from that landscape, which today is quite degraded from its former state, but it’s still breathtaking to see, and there are spots of real biodiversity that could come back if protected properly. So I really got obsessed with bogs themselves and with the moss that creates the bogs, and the way it can operate as a colony, not as a single organism. And I really wanted in this book to talk about the non human world. I think that people tend to think that we always drive events on the earth, but there are many other organisms here that have huge impact on us, in our lives, and I really wanted to share that too. 
I’ve always been a writer who puts character first, and when I embarked on writing this novel, I was prepared for some deep character dives. But Buckeye is larger in scope and size than anything I’d ever attempted, and I had no idea of the depths that awaited me… What I learned–what I keep learning, as a writer–is that when you bring a lot of characters together, a story emerges, and it’s not always the story you thought you were going to write.
