Ultra vs Nazi Hunters

Morning everyone.

For round 3 team Spruce Avenue had to review Nazi Hunters and Ultra. 

Ultimately we chose, at a vote of 2-0, to advance Nazi Hunters on to the next round.

Ultra was an interesting read. We liked how it blended together the two different narrative styles - the interview/podcast and 1st person storytelling. We connected more closely with the text and generally agreed that the text would be a great resource for a grade 7 classroom. It would not be a challenge to teach literary concepts through Ultra but I don't know if I could use it beyond grade 7 or 8. The whole storyline of his dad and that he was running to honour/overcome the loss of his him was obvious and the hallucinations could have been less frequent but there was a certain charm to the novel.

Nazi Hunters, we thought was a unique narrative. Both Christine and I expected that it would be just another WWII story of genocide and the search for humanity. We were wrong. Nazi Hunters was an enjoyable read. It was an engaging spy story about Israel's secret attempt to reveal and capture Adolf Eichmann, one of the key members of the Nazi party. One angle to the story that I was captivated by was the close connection that each member of the Palestinian group had to the holocaust. Whether they had lost their wives, children, parents, friends, etc. each member was deeply moved to be a member of the team and understood the extreme significance of what they were doing. Everyone from the pilot of the flight to the reconnaissance team was honoured to be assisting and in many cases brought to tears at the thought of success.

Nazi Hunters is the novel that we are advancing because of it wide appeal at many different grade levels. I think that it indirectly discusses the effects of the Holocaust, the fear of Nazi Germany, and the ruthlessness of Nazi leaders while reading as an spy/capture novel. We believe that Nazi Hunters, is better, even without its teachability, than Ultra and are advancing it to the next round.

See you all in Round 4!

Travis and Christine.