Customer Reviews

Island of Terror: Battle of Iwo Jima (Graphic History)

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AN interesting history format . Great for junior readers just learning about the famous and costly battle action of WW2.

My 14 year old son absolutely loves these types of books! He is somewhat of a history buff with emphasis on the wars our country has participated in. I am so proud that he loves his country and respects its leaders and troops. These books have been instrumental in teaching him the truths of battle, its hardships, and its triumphs. He has even expressed an interest in teaching history someday or even being an author/illustrator himself! Most of all, thanks to all our troops and veterans for their dedication to our country and preservation of our freedom!!

My dad served on Iwo Jima during WWII and he enjoyed reading this book. He found it accurate as to how it was there. "Island of Terror: Battle of Iwo Jima" was real. It was interesting seeing it written in comic book fashion.
Because of the way it is presented, this book would be good for history classes in our school rooms.

This is the first title in this collection of graphic histories that I read from Osprey and I am not disappointed by it. As educational material, its combination of graphics and narrative are an excellent resource of knowledge about this famous or infamous battle. The narrative follows a chronological sequence although it uses flashbacks occasionally. In addition to this, it has a table of contents, a glossary, an index, and more importantly, the text has an introduction to WWII, explains why the U.S. got involved in the war and the strategic importance of Iowa Jima. A similar section appears at the end of the book narrating the aftermath of the war with Japan, while maintaing the battle of Iowa Jima one of strategic importance. This theme is recurrent throughout the graphic narrative, that Iowa Jima was a safe haven for B29s, and its closeness to Japan made it into an important military airfield to launch attacks on mainland Japan, something that was difficult to make prior to this war. The graphics and narrative are also very realistic as they stress the number of casualties and shows images of dying men, massacres, and even bodies without legs. The text also emphasizes that winning this battle was far from easy. Victory came at high human cost from both sides. These images show us that Larry Hama doesn't aim at jingoism a la John Wayne, neither is he making an anti-war statement. Lama and artists are quite objective and they aim at making an honest representation of what happened in the war. Thus, stories of its heroes are mentioned here without hyperbolic language or imagery, stories of some of the Japanese protagonists also get some attention, the story of the famous picture of the flag of Iowa Jima is part of this narrative, and the plight of the Native American Ira Hayes also gets covered in this narrative (his story gets a broad coverage in the Clint Eastwood film The Flag of Our Fathers). The language and sentence structure makes the text appropriate for intermediate grades (6th to 8th grades).