Sunrise Over Fallujah

Myers, W.D. (2008). Sunrise Over Fallujah. NY: Scholastic Press.
LS5385: YA Lit/Realistic Fiction

First, interesting observation.  This one does not have multiple covers as far as I can tell.

And the hits keep coming. In my YA Lit class, I have now read eight books and there has only been one I disliked. (see Jumped blog)

With us on the cusp of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, this book was especially apropos to me.  It took me back to the time just after the attacks when our troops were desperately searching for Suddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction.
Thankfully, this book didn't focus on the atrocities of war in an overly descriptive way. By that, I mean that the death and the killing and the violence were not described in graphic detail.  They just didn't need to be.
Instead, it focused on one young man's emotional battle with dealing with war and the bigger meaning behind what he was doing and what he was seeing.  He struggled seeing people die - both the "bad guys" and his own fellow soldiers - but he also struggled with how he began to numb to the death.  And he struggled with God's presence and/or absence in it all.
It was very thought provoking and I especially liked that for the young reader, it was giving a realistic view of what it's like in war.  It's not dressing-up and drilling and practicing on targets.  There was a very real face to war, and it often the face of children and poverty and heartbreak - not just "the bad guys."