Don’t Talk to Me About the War takes today’s young read­ers back to Radio land and the year 1940. Back then base­ball fans sat glued to big radio sets in order to fol­low the games. Thir­teen year old Tom­my Dun­can is the main char­ac­ter here. He’s a big Dodgers fan and is not inter­est­ed in what the news­pa­pers are print­ing about the war in Europe. He’s got enough to wor­ry about with his moth­er show­ing signs of a seri­ous ill­ness. But Tom­my has a crush on four­teen year old Beth Doyle and Beth reads all the papers every day. So Tom­my can’t help learn­ing about the Nazis in Ger­many and that Ger­many is threat­en­ing France and Eng­land. Beth has a new friend named Sarah who recent­ly escaped from Nazi Ger­many by way of Aus­tria, Hol­land and Mex­i­co. Part of her fam­i­ly is still trapped over there and Sarah is wor­ried. Chil­dren will find this chap­ter book acces­si­ble and sat­is­fy­ing. They’ll keep turn­ing the pages to find out what mys­te­ri­ous and then lit­tle known ill­ness plagues Tommy’s moth­er. What will hap­pen in Europe? Will Ger­many invade France and Eng­land? Should Amer­i­ca enter the war? Author David Adler, a vet­er­an of many pop­u­lar books for young peo­ple, has the tone of this his­tor­i­cal peri­od exact­ly right. This appeal­ing paper­back book should fly off the shelves. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 9 – 12.