Radar Girls

February 1, 2021

USA TODAY best-selling Ackerman's Radar Girls tells the story of young Daisy Wilder, happy with her horses in Hawaii, who joins the real-life Women's Air Raid Defense after the attack on Pearl Harbor (100,000-copy first printing). Leave it to Chiaverini (e.g., Resistance Women) to write a book about The Women's March featuring three brave women who marched for the vote (200,000-copy first printing). In Three Words for Goodbye, New York Times best-selling coauthors Gaynor and Webb (Meet Me in Monaco) send estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers across 1937 Europe to deliver letters written by their dying grandmother. After the death in 1941 of the kidnapper who raised her in the Eastern European wilderness, a young German woman teaches a group of fleeing Jews how to survive in the forest while learning about the world's horrors in Harmel's The Forest of Vanishing Stars (150,000-copy first printing). A good companion to Natalie Haynes's A Thousand Ships, Pat Barker's The Women of Troy, and poet Anne Carson's graphic novel, The Trojan Women: A Comic, all 2021 titles, Heywood's Daughters of Sparta addresses the relationship between sisters Helen and Klytemnestra. In Tanabe's Woman of Intelligence, a frustrated 1950s Manhattan wife who once worked as a UN translator wrenches open her cage doors by agreeing to work as an FBI informant (60,000-copy first printing).

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May 15, 2021
In Hawaii, Daisy Wilder's life, like that of all Americans, changes drastically on a Sunday morning in December 1941. Tall with short hair like her role model, Amelia Earhart, Daisy supports her widowed mother by working at the stables of their wealthy neighbor, Mr. Montgomery. Fired after losing Montgomery's prize horse when the Japanese attack, Daisy, despite poor self-esteem, takes a shot at a top-secret job in the Women's Air Raid Defense (WARD), for which she must learn how to use radar and track the locations and trajectories of planes and ships. Montgomery's daughter, who has always hated Daisy, does the same, and her brother, a handsome pilot, drives them to their training classes. Daisy is a natural for the job, and although it is challenging and grueling, she and her new friends find time for romance and to search for the missing horse. Ackerman's fourth enthralling Hawaiian home-front novel, following Red Sky over Hawaii (2020), is another great addition to the current trend of tales illuminating little-known aspects of women's lives during WWII. --

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August 1, 2021

Daisy's story as a Radar Girl begins on December 7, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy bombs the island of O'ahu. A native to Hawai'i, 23-year-old Daisy is shocked and frightened while fishing that historic Sunday morning as fighting and shooting take over the stillness of the island. Born and raised in Waialua, O'ahu, Daisy works six days a week as a ranch hand to provide for herself and her mother. Louise is chronically depressed and has been completely dependent on Daisy since her husband died in the "accident" years earlier. Due to an emergency executive order, the government is looking for women to take the place of men who are being deployed to the war. Daisy comes into her own as she finds purpose and camaraderie. She and the other women become a team and form the Women's Air Raid Defense (WARD), guiding pilots into blacked-out airstrips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies. This historical novel transports readers to the islands of Hawai'i where the culture is fierce, the air is salty and fresh, and slippers (flip-flops to a Mainlander) are a way of life. The love interest story line is compelling and engaging, and readers will root for Daisy's happiness. Ackerman successfully and respectfully gives a shout-out to a group of smart, fearless, patriotic women who aided the war effort, but whose story has not been told. VERDICT A great addition to historical fiction collections for teens and adults and recommended for anyone looking for a woman's POV during World War II.-Gretchen Schulz, Schaumburg Township District Library, IL

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