A Study Guide for Kappa Senoh's "A Boy Called H," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Nonfiction Classics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Nonfiction Classics for Students for all of your research needs.

"This fictionalized autobiography...recreates the boyhood years of the eponymous H or Hajime Senoh. The Senohs, a Kobe family of modest means, were distinguised by their Christian faith and their extensive contact with foreigners....Precocious, inquisitive, and irreverent, H came of age during the dark years of Japan's descent into the abyss of war [World War II] and was a middle-school student during the conflict. The 50 vignettes that comprise this book provide an accessible, unforgettable, and intimate introduction to the effects of the war upon Japanese family life, friendships, school and society." Libr J.

This is the fascinating true story of a Japanese boy's growing disillusionment with the conduct of a patriotic war. Boy H's father was a tailor, his mother a tambourine-banging Christian in a country of very few Christians. His childhood unfolded in the 1930s, when militarism was steadily strengthening its grip on Japan; it ended when the nation lay in ruins. What set H apart from other kids, despite the sharedpreoccupation with schoolmates, movies, and sex, was an unusually sharp eye and a precociously skeptical attitude that made him a bit of a loner in a conformist society. Though at times dark, his anecdotes are arranged with the lightest of touches and a sharp sense of humor. The total effect is of a rich, varied, and intensely readable novel, but one that involves real lives, actual events.

Fourteen-year old Srulek Storch could have perished the day he arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp. But he did not. He survived that day . . . and then the next. And through the sheer strength of his faith and headstrong will he continued to survive while giving hope to himself . . . and his fellow prisoners.

A first book for middle school readers by the author of Little Troll finds young Mouse's privileged and carefree life shattered by his relocation at the hands of the villainous Mr. Button to grim Murstone Hall school, where Mouse receives help from an eclectic cast of characters while struggling to return to his family. Reprint.