Chester Nez and the Unbreakable Code
A Navajo Code Talker's Story
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A Junior Library Guild Selection April 2018
2018 Cybils Award Finalist, Elementary Non-Fiction
BRLA 2018 Southwest Book Award
2019 Southwest Books of the Year: Kid Pick
2020 Grand Canyon Award, Nonfiction Nominee
2020-2021 Arkansas Diamond Primary Book Award Master List
STARRED REVIEW! "A perfect, well-rounded historical story that will engage readers of all ages. A perfect, well-rounded historical story that will engage readers of all ages."—Kirkus Reviews starred review
Chester Nez was a boy told to give up his Navajo roots. He became a man who used his native language to help America win World War II.
As a young Navajo boy, Chester Nez had to leave the reservation and attend boarding school, where he was taught that his native language and culture were useless. But Chester refused to give up his heritage. Years later, during World War II, Chester—and other Navajo men like him—was recruited by the US Marines to use the Navajo language to create an unbreakable military code. Suddenly the language he had been told to forget was needed to fight a war.
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Bruchac begins this powerful story of Chester Nez (born Betoli) as he is taken by missionaries from the Navajo reservation to boarding school: "Chester knew he might need to live in the white man's world one day. In that world speaking English was essential, so he worked hard and did well." In 1942, Marine Corps recruiters seek speakers of English and Navajo; Bruchac clearly explains the need for a code that could not be broken by the Japanese, while lightly underscoring the irony of Chester's circumstances: "Suddenly the language he had been told to forget was important." Bruchac movingly draws a parallel between the trauma of indigenous boarding schools and war. Amini-Holmes's paintings capture the nightmarish atmosphere of both: at school, Nez's terror is embodied by red-eyed crows that fly away with locks of his sheared hair, while in his postwar dreams, birds morph into sharks resembling dive bombers. Back matter explores the recognition that code talkers received years after their service, and includes a portion of the Navajo code. Ages 7 9.
