World War II for Kids_ A History with 21 Activities

Recent history is so fascinating because you can still touch it. You can still meet and talk to people who were there when the events of World War II took place. It is up to us to take advantage of these eyewitnesses to history before it is too late. Hearing the stories from survivors helps the words leap off the page and make history real. When you read this book, you will find interviews and stories from all kinds of people about their experiences during World War II. You will learn how to interview people yourself and record their words for your children and grandchildren. Now is the time to preserve the events that your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and neighbors witnessed. You will be surprised what you discover.

I have made every effort to include as much firsthand information as possible in this book. There are three ways I have used this information. The first way uses excerpts from actual letters written by soldiers or civilians between 1939 and 1945. These letters help give us an idea what people were thinking during the war. The second way quotes people’s memories of the war word for word. I have not added anything except to clarify a word here and there. Anything I have added appears in brackets [ ]. These quotes appear as sidebars. The third way adds facts and information from other sources to various individuals’ personal stories. Sometimes I found that a person had an interesting story to tell, but it needed to be put into context with other events and facts. In this case the story is not a direct quote, but may include direct quotes within the text. Some of these stories appear as sidebars, but a few are included as part of the main text of the book