Ranger in Time – Attack on Pearl Harbor

Kate Messner's Ranger in Time - Attack on Pearl Harbor is a history adventure for 7 year olds, told mostly by a dog.

What happens

Ranger is a shaggy golden dog who trained for search and rescue and then failed the final test, because a squirrel ran past. He knew it was only a pretend rescue. He'd have ignored the squirrel for a real one.

He also has an old first aid kit that hums when somebody, somewhere, needs him. One afternoon, halfway through choosing the Christmas tree, it starts up again, and Ranger lands on the deck of a ship in Hawaii.

The date is the seventh of December, 1941.

Two children are rowing a boatful of eggs across the harbour to sell, the way they do every Sunday. A young radioman called Ben Hansen has just finished his breakfast. Then the planes come in low, and everything happens at once.

The dog's eye view is what makes this work at this age. Ranger doesn't understand the war. He understands smoke, and fear, and a person coughing somewhere below deck, and the fact that when you can't help you go and fetch somebody who can. Your reader gets the size of the thing without being handed the politics of it.

It is a real attack, though, and the book doesn't soften it much. There are men in the oily water who aren't moving. Ben is badly burned and very nearly drowns. A house catches fire with a boy trapped under a beam inside. None of it is described in gory detail, but it's relentless for a long stretch in the middle, and a sensitive seven-year-old may want you sitting next to them.

The other thing to know about is what happens to Paul and Grace's family. Their mother starts burning the household's Japanese books and a scroll, in case Americans find them. Their friend's father has already been taken away for teaching Japanese. Then soldiers stop their own father in the street while he is carrying an injured boy to hospital.

That's the part a child is most likely to ask about, and it's worth having an answer ready. Paul was born in Hawaii. He is American. He cannot understand why it makes no difference.

What to read next

If they want another animal in the middle of a war, Hero Pup of World War I gives them Stubby, a stray who ends up a sergeant, telling his own story.