Great story about the Navajo marines and recruiting methods to find men and boys to help w/the war effort.

Sometimes fiction is better for revealing truth. This novel enables Bruchac to tell much of the story of the pacific theater during WWII through the eyes of one character, now retelling the events to his grandchildren. I'm rather grateful for the framing device, it helps mute the horror somewhat. It's heartbreaking, the discrimination and abuse before the war, the horrors of the war which had to be kept secret until 1969, and the discrimination after the war. But the author manages to distill so...

This story is about a United States Marine Navajo radio operator during the second world war in the south pacific.The main characters were Ben Yahzee and Staff Sargent Anders.The main characters ran into many problems with the Imperial Japanese Army.There were no adventures in the book.My favorite character was Ben Yahzee for all of his heroics and ideas.I myself could not relate to any of the characters in the story.I have never done anything the characters in the story have done.I liked the t

3 stars for being informative, especially about an aspect of WWII with which I was unfamiliar. However, as a novel, I would probably only give it 2 stars. The way it was written made it seem like non-fiction, and not very riveting non-fiction at that. I have nothing against non-fiction, but a writer of fiction has the opportunity to enhance the dry facts and really connect the reader to what was going on, the feelings, the action, the impact. Bruchac was not as successful at that as he was at ju...

While this is fiction, it is based around historical facts, and that's a big plus for this reviewer. The depressing treatment of Navajo (and many other Native Americans) starts this tale off and acts as a wonderful counterpoint to their work as Code Talkers during World War II. Tales of island hopping are accurate, even if the main character's two friends are caricatures. Especially well told is the accurate tale of the two flag raisings on Mt. Suribachi (Iwo Jima).Also spot on though depressing...

I read this book back in 2008, before I was online or doing reviews, but I had started keeping lists. Reviewed spring/summer 2014What I remember is the humiliation of the Indians as children before the opportunity to become the code talkers of WWII and serve in the Marines vindicated them. The language for which their mouths had been washed out with soap in boarding schools became a way of saving lives and a source of pride. Also, I remembered the healing ritual the protagonist went through once...

For this review, I decided to borrow an idea from one of my favorite movie bloggers, Nathaniel Rogers. When new trailers debut, he groups his thoughts into three kinds of responses: yes, no, and maybe so. Now, the book that I am reviewing, Joseph Bruchac's Code Talkers, is not a movie, and I am not just now encountering it for the first time. But I am going to apply the yes/no/maybe so format anyway because it gives me something reasonably interesting to say about a book I respected but didn't r...

This writing is so real. Multiple times, I felt like I needed to double check that this was really fiction - it felt so much like a transcript of an interview with a real person. I have to give credit to the quality of the writing for that.I've saved reading Code Talker for years. It's been quite a few years since I booktalked a book that came out more than 10 years ago. But I always try to include an ownvoices book by a Native American, and this was Code Talkers year.I loved that he went into d...

The author, Joseph Bruchac, did an outstanding job with voice. I knew a bit about the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII, but I learned even more fascinating details.

Truly exceptional book. It gives a realistic view of the native Americans in WWII.

Read this about four years ago in seventh grade. I was starting to get into military history back then, and this book was actually really good for a YA novel about war.Bruchac has created a terrific historic novel that has enough action for young male adults and enough history and research to appeal to an adult audience. Bruchac does a wonderful job of giving a sense of the complexities of growing up on a Navajo reservation in the first half of the book. The irony of a nation trying to wipe out

Wow

Fascinating look at World War II from a totally unique perspective. Without the proud, brave and capable Navajo code talkers, effective communication among all of the various U.S. military branches would have been for more difficult, if not impossible. The Navajos and their code were crucial to the hard-fought victory in the Pacific theater.

4.5OMG I’m so grateful that I accidentally pick up this book. Actually before reading it, I’d had really limited knowledge about what would happen in this book. But it turned out it’s such an excellent work! I think the beauty of historical fiction, especially these talking about World War II, is that it would help you know certain periods of history. I do think these kinds of books should be provided to students in order to spark their interests instead of force them to learn facts by heart. Ap...

This book was very interesting. It really gave me a good idea how much the Navajos helped the americans win world war 2. Also it gave me a really good idea of what the veterans were talking about who were in world war 2.

Here is another book by an award-winning children's author, that must be considered a book for everyone. Although the book is fully accessible to students who are upper middle school or high school students, this book is also an engaging, informative, and worthwhile book for adults as well. By focusing on one main (fictional) character and following his way through World War II in the Pacific Ocean, the enormity of the conflict is condensed to a size that is manageable for a novel. When consider...

Code Talker is a wonderful book, describing the secret role Navajo Marines played in World War 2 by using their native language to send coded messages to allied forces. Although the narrator is fictional, his experiences are representative of actual Navajos as they were taught and then recruited to the Marines for their important task. I appreciate that the author chose to begin with the white man's education many Navajo children endured. This education served as a retraining; Indians were taugh...

Eeeeh, I hate giving bad reviews. This just read more like a semantic journal of military operations they went on then anything that really explored the critical role of indigenous people during the war, or a substantive history of how this code system was developed. I was so excited to read this because I have forefathers who were themselves code talkers, but I guess I will have to look elsewhere for that. If you’re looking for a book on strategical operations during specific island skirmishes

All his life Ned Begay has been told that being Navajo is bad. At the mission school, all the Navajos are told to forget their language, to forget everything about being Navajo. Speaking English and emulating the white man is the only way to get ahead, or so they are told. However, when World War II breaks out, Ned learns that the Marines are actively recruiting Navajos. For the first time, Americans are in need of Navajos and their language. An unbreakable code is being developed using the Nava...

I picked this book up on a whim at Barnes & Noble back at the end of June, because a) it sounded interesting (I mean, how often do you find books about First Peoples' experiences during war?!), and b) it was only $7 so I could afford to take the risk. And I was pleasantly surprised to find this was a comprehensive and fast paced novel about a subject that I've found intriguing since..........okay, fine. Since I was a total X-Phile and there was that whole arc at the start of season 3 where Mulde...