Code Talker: A Novel about the NAVAJO Marines of World War two

Review from Voice of Youth Advocates:

At the age of six, Navajo Kii Yazhi is sent to the mission school in Gallup, New Mexico, where he is immediately shorn of his hair, his language, and his name. Even though told repeatedly that Navajo is a worthless language, Kii Yazhi, now called Ned Begay, manages to retain his native tongue through graduation and passage into high school. When the United States enters World War II, sixteen-year-old Ned lies about his age and enlists in the Marines. Because he still remembers his own language despite his re-education efforts at the hands of whites, Ned is selected to become one of the Navajo Marines who use a complex native language to create an unbreakable code for wartime communication. Together with others of his people, the young Marine is sent into the bloody Pacific Theater, seeing action at Guam, Iwo Jima, Suribachi, and Okinawa. Bruchac's fictional Ned Begay represents all the Navajo Marines who, despite their treatment by white America, fought valiantly in foreign wars. Ned tells his own story in simple, measured prose, as a grandfather's tale to his grandchildren. The author never allows his lovely and poignant novel to become a polemic against the mindless abuse of the mission schools or the horrors of war in the Pacific, but he instead offers a portrait of a brave and generous man who represents any teenager caught in the forces of history. This fine novel should find a place in all collections serving young adults.