Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood

World War I can be a complicated topic to cover with students. More than one teacher has been told the war made no sense. Just why did these people end up going to war? Finding resources that don't lie about the horror of the war, but are still age appropriate regarding the subject matter can be challenging. It can be hard to find a balance.

Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales 4): A World War I Tale uses a graphic novel format to tackle the subject.

For those not familiar with the Nathan Hale format reading the first book Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spyis not a bad idea. It explains how and why Nathan Hale, the Executioner, and the British soldier appear at different historical sites. There is a brief introduction at the beginning of this book, but while I don't believe you need to read all the books in order, reading the first one prior to any of the others is not a bad choice.

The author chooses an interesting approach to explaining the participants in the war. At the behest of the Executioner, each country participating in the story is assigned an animal to represent that country throughout the graphic novel. I'm not generally a reader of graphic novels. That doesn't mean I don't see the value in them, but they just aren't generally a style I enjoy. When the author first introduced the idea of each country being represented by an animal I was concerned it was going to be rather silly and distracting. This however, demonstrated my lack of knowledge of graphic fiction. As the story continued I realized unlike the previous novel which had colonial soldiers and Red Coats which could easily be distinguished in graphic pictures, using animals in a situation where many of the uniforms would be hard to distinguish from each other in graphic format made sense. As the story continued I found myself relying on the animals to help me remember which countries were represented in the story. While I began not liking the idea, I found very quickly that it was quite useful.

I was impressed with the explanation for the reasons for the war. For the length and format of the book it didn't stick to the general explanations one often sees in children's history of this period. The discussions of the negotiations for peace while done in an amusing included information often left out of other children's books.

The book moves on to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and provides a fairly accurate description. Two things stood out for me about the writing regarding the beginning of the war. The first was how the author took time to describe the beginning of the war without diving into trench warfare right off the bat. The author explains how and why the war evolved into trench war, but spends a significant amount of time describing the war before the advent of trenches. The second area was the role of Belgium. Belgium wanted badly to remain neutral and this book focuses on why Belgium was not going to be able to continue this course and what there role was as a result of their geography.

The book moves on to the challenges of trench warfare, the massive casualties, the use of gas, and the overall path of the war. Due to the length of the book it lightly addresses the exit of the Russians from the war due to the Russian Revolution and the entry of the United States into the War. At one point the author even has the narrator explain which topics they didn't get to due to time constraints in story telling. I liked the honesty of this. It tells the reader there is more to discover.

I continue to be impressed with this history series. It is a great way for students to explore history while enjoying a graphic novel format.