It seemed a topic that might be best explored through the range of contemporary childrenвЂ™s literature about the war, and the Baldwin Collection holds the second-largest collection of historical childrenвЂ™s books in the country. I began to wonder how contemporary young people constructed the conflict intellectually and emotionally and, indeed, how much they might have known about the situation in Europe. My study topic emerged from my experience working as a school librarian, particularly my work at Buckhorn High School in Madison County, Alabama, a Gilder-Lehrman history high school that included an elective on the Great Wars.Дuring the associated study of the Holocaust, the students often asked what was known stateside about the atrocities being committed in Europe, especially as personal accounts from the liberating forces seemed to relay surprise at the brutality they discovered. An Austrian refugee, the creation of a refugee writer, pointedly informs a naГЇve French peasant boy: вЂњThere are a great many Germans who hated the Nazis, didnвЂ™t you know that?вЂќ 1 before revealing his father was a prisoner at Dachau.ДЄs a 2016 Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellow, I was fortunate to spend a month at the University of Florida studying their Baldwin Collection of historical childrenвЂ™s literature. In one of the most charged depictions, a pair of dachshunds forced to wear Nazi uniforms outwit their master. Promoting support for Allied Forces was a central theme of contemporary childrenвЂ™s literature in the eve of and during World War II the body of work captures a surprisingly complex and conflicted view of armed conflict and nationhood.ДЄmid the expected imperatives that American children scavenge scrap metal for war bonds and cozy stories of English children evacuated to safety in North America, there is nostalgia for pastoral Russia and an unabashed celebration of the Soviet collective effort. She received the Louise Seaman Bechtel fellowship in the summer of 2016 to support her study of World War IIвЂ“era childrenвЂ™s literature.

She is the current AASL Region V Director.

Wendy Stephens is Chair of the School Library Media program at Jacksonville State University.

Hope for the home front