Lynch, Chris. The Right Fight. New York: Scholastic Press, 2014.

This new World War II series is certainly a gift to middle and high school librarians. The Right Fight grabbed me right away with a chapter about, well, baseball and dames. We meet Roman Bucyk as he is playing his last minor league baseball game with the Red Sox organization before he goes to boot camp. Although the United States has not formally entered World War II, Roman and several young men like him have enlisted in the army, to be trained…to fight the Nazis for their love of the United States, baseball and their girls. We get to travel with Roman to basics and several training missions where he learns of his affinity for driving tanks. We follow him to Algeria where he fights under Commander Cowans withWyatt, Logan, and Pacifico. Meanwhile his fiancé Hannah joins the WAFS program, becoming an air traffic controller. Through Roman’s eyes, and their letters to each other students will learn a little about history, love, friendship and coming of age in a time period that is so near to ours and yet so different. The characters are believable and engaging. The history just sort of sneaks up on the reader. The dialogue is peppered with period slang and cultural references. The battle scenes are exceptionally realistic, but suitable for a school audience.

I am constantly on the lookout for military/war books for my guys. The challenge is finding engaging and interesting ones that are school appropriate. Chris Lynch does not disappoint. We can’t keep his Vietnam series on the shelf. I anticipate a similar to this series. I hope I can soon find time to read book two – same war, different branch of the military.The