• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7

A young soldier's gritty account of "the bloodiest nine hours in Canadian military history" - the tragic Dieppe raid of WWII

Alistair "Allie" Morrison lets his friend Mackie talk him into enlisting for WWII, even though he's only 18. After months of endless training Allie's eager for battle. But his first action is not just any battle... it's the disastrous raid on the German-held port of Dieppe.

He and his unit are under orders to take one of the main beaches, but they disembark from their landing craft onto a killing ground. As Allie gets his bearings and makes sense of the horror on every side, he witnesses friends advance into a massacre.

All told, almost a thousand Canadian soldiers died that day. In the resulting chaotic evacuation, Allie and Mackie are captured as POWs and sent to Stalag VIIIB in Germany. Still shell-shocked from their fighting, the soldiers struggle to maintain their courage. Others, like Mackie, are determined to plot an escape and outwit their captors, at any cost.

Historian Jack Granatstein vetted Prisoner of Dieppe to ensure historical accuracy.

HUGH BREWSTER has twenty-five years of experience creating books about the Titanic as an editor, publisher and writer. He worked with Robert D. Ballard to produce the 1987 international bestseller The Discovery of the Titanic and oversaw the creation of Titanic: An Illustrated History, a book that provided inspiration for James Cameron’s epic movie. Brewster is also the author of Inside the Titanic, 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions about the Titanic and Deadly Voyage, and has written twelve award-winning books for young readers, including Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, a 2007 Governor General’s Award nominee. He lives in Toronto. Visit him online at www.hughbrewster.com or follow him on Twitter @hughbrewster.

Hugh Brewster's profile page

• Short-listed, Rocky Mountain Book Award (Alberta Children's Choice)
• Short-listed, Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award
• Commended, Resource Links, Best of the Year
• Commended, Best Books for Kids and Teens, Canadian Children's Book Centre
• Short-listed, Hackmatack Children's Choice Award (Atlantic Canada)
• Commended, OLA Best Bets

Praise for I Am Canada

"... the chief characters are eminently likeable and quietly heroic, and their tales utterly engrossing." -The Globe and Mail

"... makes history come alive through an expert mix of fact and fiction." -Quill & Quire, starred review.

"... its lively writing style will maintain reader interest throughout." -CM Magazine, 3 1/2 stars out of 4

"I was riveted by the story... . It's very well written. The book is filled with the details of the life of a soldier and POW, but it never dragged. The pacing was quick and yet nothing is taken from the characterizations." - Chrisbookarama.com

Prisoner of Dieppe (I Am Canada)

Nine years after the inception of its girl-targeted Dear Canada series, Scholastic Canada has created a literary ‘little brother.’ I Am Canada books are intended to introduce boys to exciting moments in our history through intimate fictional first-person accounts created by well-known authors. Like the original series, each book includes maps, historical photos and documents, a glossary and authors’ notes. Judging by the first two exciting books of the I Am Canada series, the writers’ instructions may have been “create a personable, every-boy narrator who observes great danger and death, learns about the value of friends and family, and is not yet overly focussed on the opposite sex.”

In Blood and Iron, the young narrator witnesses “iron madness” — the building of the railroad in British Columbia in 1882 and the high number of accidents and deaths among labourers brought from China. Lee Heen-gwong hopes to help his indebted family. But money seems impossible to earn with the company charging high fees for everything from socks to food, and his father running up gambling debts. Heen’s diaries express how he is sometimes frustrated and depressed, and other times just glad to be alive and sound of body.

This book is not the triumphant The Last Spike recounting of Eurocentric glory, but an often melancholy view inside the dark tunnels of railroad history, powerful in its frankness. Veteran author Paul Yee brings Heen’s valuable fictional story to a young reader’s point of view. Blood and Iron augments Yee’s list of such unforgettable stories about the lives of immigrants and Canadianborn people of Chinese origins in titles such as Ghost Train and Dead Man’s Gold and Other Stories.

After reading another book, Prisoner of Dieppe, I am convinced that, despite his boyish good looks, Hugh Brewster must have been overseas in WWII. Brewster certainly did not, of course, witness the war first hand, but for this and his other book on the topic (Dieppe: Canada’s Darkest Day of WWII) he has researched extensively and talked to people who survived Prisoner of War (POW) camps.

Readers follow the reminiscences of Alistair Morrison who writes to his grandson, coming clean about what happened when he and his best friend were behind barbed wire and how Mackie really died. Included are little-known facts that readers will never forget, such as how POWs cleaned themselves without toilet paper or any paper whatsoever, even with bound wrists. As a historian, I have read many books about WWII, but Prisoner of Dieppe made the war experience real for me in a unique way.

After a highly enjoyable read of the first two books in the series, it’s easy to predict that children (boys and girls) can look forward to some terrific reading material in Scholastic’s I Am Canada series.

Prisoner of Dieppe: World War II (I Am Canada)

In 1940, Alistair Morrison and his friend Mackie enlist in the army in search of adventure and manhood. After two years of being stationed in England, they find themselves on their way to the beaches of Dieppe. Alistair recounts the battle, which turned out to be the “bloodiest nine hours in Canadian military history,” and how captured soldiers attempted to escape the harsh conditions of the Nazi POW camps.