Rifles for Watie
Acceptable with guidance. Age: 12+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Jeff is a sixteen-year-old farm boy from Kansas who joins the Union Army in the Civil War. He becomes a spy and lives with the soldiers on the other side. He learns that there are good people on both sides of a war. It has battles and sad parts, and it is good for kids about twelve and up. This Newbery Medal winner shows a boy who keeps his conscience in wartime. He refuses to join a firing squad and he learns to see his enemies as men. We found no Catholic review of record or curriculum placement, so we give it with guidance. The content cells are blank because the two reader logs we found disagree. Parents should know it carries the racial language and dialect of its day.
For parents
Read aloud from about ten or eleven. Independent reading from twelve, in line with the Kirkus range of 12 to 15. It is a long book at about 350 pages. Kirkus calls the war story grim and bloody, so expect battle deaths and an execution by firing squad. Ask: why does Jeff refuse to take part in the firing squad? What does it cost him? How can Jeff care about people on the side he is fighting? This is a good place to teach that every person has dignity, even an enemy, and that a soldier must still follow his conscience. Squeaky Clean Reviews logs several major battles vividly described, looting of civilians, and some drinking among the soldiers. Readers on Goodreads warn of period racial language and stereotyped dialect, and a commenter on a Catholic blog reports that the N-word appears. Say plainly that we do not use that word. Tell your child that the way some characters are described is unfair and that all people are made in the image of God. On romance, Squeaky Clean Reviews logs some kisses and soldiers who talk to a girl seductively.