Thursday, July 25, 2019

Code Talkers by Jospeh Bruchac


Code Talkers by Jospeh Bruchac was the final book I read for school this past year.  After reading the book, I researched the real Navajo Code Talkers for a project and learned more about their role in World War 2.

Code Talkers begins with a grandfather talking to his grandchildren about how his medal had a whole story to tell. Kii Yâzhí, or Ned Begay by his American name, was a Navajo Indian. He entered the Marine Corps expecting to just fight for his native land but ended up being one of the biggest parts of the war as a code talker.  The Navajo code talkers were a regular group of Marines, secretly trained to use a nearly impossible to break code based on their language.

The story follows Ned on his journey through battle, loss, and friendship. After boot camp and code school, Ned is ready to go into battle around the world to transmit life saving messages. Everywhere he fought, he was constantly making new friends and meeting up with old ones. Though he is proud of fighting for his country, Ned is still scared from the war and devastation and missing home.

Code Talkers is a good historical fiction novel. The author described a lot of events and other things that happened very close to how they really were, just from the perspective of the fictional Ned Begay. The author did skip a few things that happened with the real Code Talkers, but I believe that the things that were skipped just made the story flow better for a novel. Overall, I think the author did a very thorough job of describing the lives of the Code Talkers.