Recommended Books and Movies

                                                                    
BOOKS WITH HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS

1.  Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
This book is about two Native soldiers, Xavier and Elijah, who enlist in the Canadian army in WWI.  They are like brothers and look out for each other.  All the battles in the grade 10 History class are covered as well as trench warfare, shell shock and many other gruesome aspects of war.  It's really interesting to see how one soldier does not handle the war experience so well but the other does.  There is also description of First Nations history and culture in Canada.  

2. Any Known Blood by Lawrence Hill
This is an amazing book that details Black Canadian history.  It traces many generations of one family dating back to the eighteenth century as the protaganist is researching his own family history.  The book goes into great detail about early Black settlements in Oakville and Baltimore.  It also connects to the story of the appearance of the KKK in Ontario in the 1920s. 

3. Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
A story centred on a historical document called the Book of Negroes that includes the name of every African slave that came over to North America on slave ships.  It focuses on the life of Aminata Diallo, born in West Africa in 1745. She is kidnapped from her village and sold into slavery.  She does everything she can to save herself, which involves many traumatic and disturbing events in her life, but she perseveres teaching herself to read and write.  It connects to American, Canadian and African history.  

4. La Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The author of this book was killed in a concentration camp during WWII; this book was not found until sixty years after her death.  It has two parts. The first, "Storm in June," chronicles the connecting lives of a group of Parisians, all fleeing city comforts for the countryside, just a few hours ahead of the advancing Germans. The second, "Dolce," set in 1941 in a farming village under German occupation, tells how peasant farmers, their pretty daughters and rich collaborators coexisted with their Nazi rulers. In a workbook entry penned just weeks before her arrest, Némirovsky noted that her goal was to describe "daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides." 

5. Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland of Afghanistan to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. This book also covers recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a fantastic work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that we don't really know a lot about.  Especially interesting because the Canadian forces are in Afghanistan today.

6. Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
In this Holocaust novel, Bruno leaves his wonderful Berlin home with his parents because of "the fury."  Bruno soon finds himself at "Off With," where he is surrounded by people dressed in striped pajamas. Bruno makes friends with a young prisoner and observes the cruelty of a controlling soldier. Bruno innocently explores the life of the young prisoner and makes horrifying discoveries along the way.  This is also a movie.

7. The Way the Crow Flies by Anne Marie MacDonald 
The author takes the case of Stephen Truscott, who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Lynn Harper in small town Clinton Ontario as the backdrop to her novel. The book covers the trial and all the intrigue that goes into what happens when a murder shakes a small town (in this book the town is dominated by a military base). The Cold War is also implicated in this book.

8. The Birth House
This book takes place in the early 1900s in Nova Scotia.  Dora Rare, a young girl, inherits the secrets of the local midwife.  The book follows Dora as she grows up and also traces the fight of the local women to control how they give birth in the face of a doctor that insists the women give birth in a maternity clinic.  This is a really good book that shares lessons on the struggles women have had to keep the business of their own bodies to themselves!! 

9. The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian
This is a book for young adults that tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.  Although it's American, it's still a revealing look at life on the reserve and also at how Junior is condemned as a traitor to his people for leaving and going to an all-white school in the neighbouring farm town.  

10. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A Novel
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.  It's about how people can care and save each other in face of the greatest obstacles.  It's also about how books can save lives too! It's written in a very clever way because the story is told in 20 different voices writing letters to each other.

11. Civilization: The West and the Rest
This is not a fiction book and is most appropriate for the Grade 12 course, West and the World.  The author asks, 'How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed?' He argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors.  But he also posits that today the non western world now has all those same applications and will use them to surge to superiority for the next 500 years.  This book is extremely eye-opening and a must read for any student pursuing study in government, public administration, history or the humanities at the post secondary level.

 

MOVIES
1. Passchendaele.  Watch trailer.
2. Swing Kids. Watch trailer.
3. Saving Private Ryan. Watch trailer.
4. The Untouchables. Watch trailer.
5. Black Robe. Watch trailer.
6. Hotel Rwanda. Watch trailer.
7. Schindler's List. Watch trailer.
8. Life is Beautiful. Watch trailer.
9. Gladiator. Watch trailer.
10. Amistad. Watch trailer.
11. Cinderella Man. Watch trailer.
12. Water. Watch trailer. 
13. Argo. Watch trailer.

14. Book of Negroes - CBC miniseries.