Good book! Super relevant. It discusses hate, internet safety, and coming of age. Middle graders should read this even if they aren’t gamers. It shows how something can turn into something big and bad so easily and how you can come back from it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the DRC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Caleb helped write the grant that bought eight high-powered gaming computers for his middle school, and he becomes a member of the school’s new esports team. The group decides to devote a semester to playing a popular game based on World War ll called the Good War and the group members form teams representing the Axis and the Allies.

There are a lot of friendship and personality issues to be worked out among the team members as well as game roles and strategies to decide. Soon their matches are being live streamed with classmates providing commentary on Twitch, and the local news is paying attention. When members of the Axis team begin speaking with German accents and wearing matching t-shirts decorated with German medals, it’s clear that hate groups have begun to influence the gamers and both kids and adults have to figure out how to respond.

The first of many books I anticipate reading about e-sports and the sub-plot about hate groups is age-appropriate and necessary.

I was in college taking a Propaganda course when I read Todd Strasser's The Wave. It's a story about how readily people will give up their individual rights and personal freedom to become part of a dominating peer group in a classroom experiment designed to show students how Germans were persuaded to support Nazism. It was a simplified experiment, but the part that Strasser got right was that we are all responsible for our own actions and to question a leader and never follow him blindly. Now, we have The Good War in which Strasser gives readers a somewhat updated version of The Wave, but takes it to a virtual battlefield.

Ironville Middle School has had to cancel football for lack of funds and taking advantage of that, seventh grader Caleb Arnett had worked with math teacher Ms. B on a grant that provided state of the art gaming computers to the school. Now, for the first time, there would be an eSports club, despite the Principal's skepticism about gaming. Eight students show up for the inaugural meeting, including loner Zach Cook and bully Crosby Fugard, and soon a game is chosen and teams are formed.

The game, The Good War or TGW for short, mimics the Allied and Axis forces in World War II. Emma Lopez is chosen to be team captain for the Allies, and has Caleb, Zach and Nathan on her team, while Gavin Morgenstern is the Axis captain with Crosby, Tyler and Mackenzie on his side. The eSports Club meets once a week after school, and it doesn't take long for the players to really get into it. Soon, the Axis players are all wearing Nazi type clothing and speaking in fake German accents. Sadly, most of the students don't really have an understanding of World War II and what happened. For them, it's just a video game.

Things really get out of hand when there is a malware attack during a club meeting that features Nazi symbols, leading to a fight between two opposing players. After all Caleb's hard work to get these computers, this the end of eSports Club?

The Good War is told in the third person alternating voices of Caleb, Zach, Emma, Nathan and Crosby. Each of these students have issues and it is interesting to see how they evolve over the course of 10 weeks. Caleb is overly extended thanks to his hovering parents who want him to excel in everything; loner Zach is a fidgety boy with multiple tics, but is a great skateboarder and gamer, while quiet Emma lives in her older sisters shadow, unable to stand up for herself. Crosby, who mother has cancer and is going through chemo, is the most vulnerable of the group. He plays TGW online with a white supremacist who is slowly radicalizing him.

Through the members of the eSports Club, Strasser explores themes of bigotry, prejudice, the misuse of social media, racism, and bullying. While it is a little hard to believe that a middle school would allow students to play a game like The Good War, which is rated Mature, I could still suspend my disbelief for the sake of the story. And what about Ms. B's lack of leadership and control over the eSports Club? In my teaching life, I have met a few Ms. Bs, which is sad to say.

I wrote a dissertation on how novels for girls were used to indoctrinate them into NSDAP thinking, so naturally, I found The Good War and The Wave to be interesting books that tackle the theme of indoctrination and belonging. There was a reason Hitler courted German youth but you might be surprised to learn that German parents weren't quite as supportive as we have been lead to believe. Which made me wonder, where were all the parents of the kids in the eSports club?

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was an eARC gratefully received from NetGalley

** spoiler alert ** *I was provided an e-arc of this book for an honest review from the publisher through NetGalley.

This book was very different from anything I had ever read before. I don't have any experience with esports, but I love that the author is using something that is popular with kids today in conjunction with history to address some very serious themes.

In this upper middle grade novel we follow an esports (video-gaming) team at a school that is playing a game called The Good War. (It is mentioned multiple times that the school started the esports team because it had to get rid of its football team. I don't know why this came up b/c I didn't feel it was necessary. But I digress...) The Good War is a Call of Duty type of game that is a simulation of WWII. Things start coming to head when one team requests to always be the Axis Powers. Racists slogans and images start coming into play and there is a lot of discussion about how "kids today" don't understand the original context/implications of these words and images.

There is also racism discussed within the multiple students home lives that are shared throughout the novel. At one point a student "meets" a recruiter for a white supremacy group online and attends a rally. There are definitely more mature and serious themes in this novel and I definitely wouldn't just hand it to a child without being available to discuss it with them and know the context of the book myself.

Overall I felt that the themes in this book are definitely themes that needed to be discussed, but I almost wanted more from it. Because the book is told in multiple alternating perspectives it was sometimes hard to connect to some of the characters. I also wanted to see more explanation of why the slogans/shirts/images were wrong so that the readers of the book ("kids today") had a better understanding of them and why they shouldn't be using them. Definitely an interesting approach to this topic though.

There is a new eSports after school club. It won't replace football which was cut but maybe the new computers and hype will generate some excitement. The students who join decide to form teams and compete over the semester playing a really popular game based on WWII called The Good War. But as things progress the teams get too competitive and one side even starts bringing in symbols and clothing and even ideology that reflects the Axis side. Can the students learn from the past in order to heal the present and prevent things like this from happening again.

At one point in the book I was getting a bit concerned with the audience and then the exposure to the hate speech and symbols, especially in the chat room scenes. And then there was the conversation between the teacher and principal and I even discussed the book with my daughter (very smart, history major). There really is a balance of exposing our students to hateful language and internet safety so they don't get sucked into it.

I have been around for a while and knew the name Todd Strasser but for some reason I was associating him with more fluff pieces - not sure why. As I read the end of the book and saw that he wrote The Wave back in 1981 I remembered reading it and seeing the after school special. That was 40 years ago... and we are still dealing with it. Sigh.

I feel like this book is built on some false assumptions. Like how these middle school kids have absolutely no awareness of the Holocaust or what it means to be a Nazi. And it's not as if ignorance is necessary for the plot to work. At that age many kids have something of an obsession with the taboo.

The plot is largely focused on the growing divide between two groups of kids. A divide that is already present but enhanced by their roles in a game. Ideas like the power of symbols and radicalization are tacked on as an afterthought but really deserved more focus. With so many big ideas explored at only a surface level, the book on a whole is a bit of a disappointment.

#TheGoodWar #NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley, Random House Children, and Todd Strasser for the advance reading copy.
This is an excellent book for young people because it approaches online gaming in a school setting, with wonderful characters and current social issues. A teacher tries to get more kids involved with school by introducing an eGaming club, but her good intentions have some unforeseen negative consequences. Great for middle schoolers!

An esports club at school gets out of hand when the team playing as the Axis Powers uses some troubling and dangers strategies. *Review of a free ARC from Net Galley.

The Good War by Todd Strasser is a must-read for middle schoolers. A few students join the new video game club at their school. They are divided into two teams to play a game called, The Good War, which is based off of World War II. One team is the Allies and the other one is the Axis. Unfortunately, some of the students begin to take the game too seriously and begin to act and dress like Naxis. In addition, one of the students is friends with a man online who is part of a white supremacist movement. The story also includes situations where students are being bullied and trying to fit in. The God War will be an excellent book for middle school students to read and discuss issues such as online safety, bullying, and bigotry.

As you begin The Good War it seems as though the book will just be about middle schoolers playing video games but as the book continues you discover there is way more to it. The setting is primarily at the middle school of a small, lower income town. After the school loses funding for their football team, one of the students manages to get a grant for new computers to start an esports club at school. The characters who join the teams are quite diverse and the story is told from the point of view of several of them. In the process we get to know many of them well. At the beginning it is difficult to understand the characters and their actions but as the story progresses, we learn that they are dealing with some difficult things. It's a good reminder that this is the same case in real life.

The author, Todd Strasser, provides a well-written and entertaining story that has excellent character development and great lessons. Due to its esports theme, The Good War will initially appeal to video gamers but it is also a great book for parents to read with their teens (which I highly recommend). There are several mature themes so it can provide the opportunity for parents to have good discussions with their children in regards to hate, racism, genocide, and homophobia, to name a few.

I feel like this book was very timely. My son is the same age as the characters in this story, and he belongs to the gamers club at his middle school. I could totally see him and his friends as I read this book. There were so many themes woven throughout the story, including being a new kid in school, navigating friendships, overcoming shyness, and family dynamics, in addition to the overarching theme of internet safety and what happens when a game gets taken too seriously. I think this would be a great book for middle school kids to read in class in order to have discussions about all of these topics.

Todd Strasser has a penchant for writing books with a moral, and "The Good War" does not deviate from his standard style. While the lessons learned in the book are absolutely important for students to understand, Strasser is heavy on the lesson and light on character development. He hammers home the need to understand what hate speech looks like and how pervasive it can be on social media. Other lessons include bullying, friendship and standing up for what you believe in. Again, these are necessary lessons, but because the characters are so flat, it reads more like a morality tale without any depth. Descriptions and emotions are sparse, and it's difficult to connect with the characters. Middle school students will be interested in the book for it's gaming storyline, but the other aspects - narrative from different character POVs, for example - may turn them off.

When Ironville middle school looses its football team they replace it with a esport club. The kids choose The Good War, a computer game based on World War II. But no one ever expected the division it would cause.

This is a fun book that also makes kids aware of internet safety and what can happen if they are not practicing it while using the internet. The kids also learn a lot about bullying, hate crimes, and they way they see each other. All in all this is a fun book that also sneaks in some learning, I really liked it a lot.



This will appear on my blog on Jan. 26th.

Life in middle school is filled with many challenges, and this book explores many of them. A great and interesting cast of kids make this book very relatable. It also directly discusses current issues relevant to kids such as gaming, bullying, online safety, and growing political unrest between people in America. A perfect and thoughtful read for 2020!

I had high expectations for this book, based on the author and description. However, I was 20% in and not much had happened yet. The students had finally had the meeting for the esports club and I didn’t find myself invested in any of the characters. I stopped reading at this point so I could move on to another book on my NetGalley list.

There were just so many things wrong with this book, from the stereotypical students to the Nazi uniforms. The message was also a little heavy handed. While the premise of the story is a good one, it could have been done with a much more subtle grace. Also, many of the messages, such as Crosby's dive into white supremacy are never fully fleshed out.

Thank you to NetGalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
In the small town of Ironville, budget cuts have forced the dissolution of the school’s popular football team. Seventh grader Caleb, with the help of his teacher, Ms. B, writes a grant and the school received 8 brand new gaming computers. The principal is apprehensive until Ms. B assures her that the computers can be used for research in addition to gaming. A new afterschool eSports club is formed. The students decide that The Good War, a wildly popular video game, will be the first game of the beta test for the club. The game setting is World War II in Germany – Axis vs Allies. The students on the Allies, Caleb, Zach, Emma, and Nathan, are seen as outsiders, or misfits, and often bullied by the more popular kids who make up the Axis team – Crosby, Gavin, Mackenzie, and Tyler. As the games progress, the Axis team starts to emulate the Germans, from wearing t-shirts with the double lightning bolt to the Nazi salute. None of the students really knows what happened during the Nazi regime and don’t understand what they are doing is wrong and dangerous.
I really liked how this book showed the dangers of the internet and how they bleed over into real life. Strasser makes sure to tie in the current hate seen on the internet as well as the news. I do feel that some things were wrapped up too neatly at the end but, overall, it should be required reading for middle schoolers. I would definitely recommend this for sixth grade and up due to the mature material.
#TheGoodWar #NetGalley

This book explored tough topics such as white supremacy, radicalization and stereotyping in a way that teens can relate to: through video gaming. I was surprised and pleased with Strasser's head-on approach to these topics. He didn't sugar coat the topic and allowed the characters to make mistakes and learn from them as the story unfolded. The ending felt a bit rushed, I was expecting a little more from it based on the foreshadowing of the "big event" that happened. A good story, would be an excellent book for middle school book clubs.

When a gaming computer after school club starts, it sets off a series of events that no one expected. Two opposing teams clash when hate symbols start showing up,and many realize they need to be proactive about not using them. Students begin to realize that it feels good to help others especially when someone is being bullied., This book did a great job at dealing with hate symbols and showing how teamwork can help many in many different ways.