D-Day: The Invasion of Normandy, 1944.

Atkinson, Rick.  D-Day: The Invasion of Normandy, 1944.     Macmillan/Henry Holt    2014  202p  $18.99  ISBN 978-1-62779-111-3 jr/sr  Nonfiction  VG  

A concise but information-dense and compelling account of D-Day adapted for a younger audience from the author's bestselling The Guns at Last Light, this book is not well suited to readers below the high-school level, but it is an excellent choice for readers at or above it.  The text's adaptation from a book intended for adult readers does not mean that the language has been "dumbed down," and in fact there are even instances where some of the soldiers' more colorful language is included unaltered.  Despite being nonfiction, the work is not completely without pathos, and it makes it easy to imagine the horror the landing parties experienced.  There is a good deal of information about the planning that lead up to the attack, which makes it more interesting for war buffs, but other readers may find that the statistics portion lags a bit.  The major downside to this volume is that the illustrations are entirely in black and white, and this saps some of its visual appeal while lending it a certain gravitas.  Confusingly, there is also a page labeled “Map Legend” that does not seem to correspond to any map in the text, although it helpfully lists the kinds of groups in an army, so that readers can tell the difference between a corps and a company, a brigade and a battalion.         

Summary: A concise but information-dense and compelling account of D-Day adapted for a younger audience from the author's bestselling The Guns at Last Light.

World War II, D-Day                                   --Bethany Geleskie