This story is about eleven-year olds in the summer of 1941. Mark and Swede are best friends who are swimming in the river, experiencing a lazy and delicious summer day of do-nothing-ness when Swede takes a dive and finds a submerged car. AH! ...

It's March 1942, three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor bringing American into World War II. Twelve-year-old Mark Penn is playing war, honing his skills to one day be a marine. Out near the old Beck place, he sees something that at first...

The setting for "Kaiser Brightman 082314" by Michael Springer is New Bonn, Minnesota in 1944. German prisoners were detained across the river at Muskrat Island. They worked in the local cannery that was short of labor. Three twelve year old boys spent the summer watching...

It’s the summer of 1945, and World War II in Europe is over. In New Bonn, Minnesota, thirteen-year-olds Frank Warner, Jack Steiner, and Skeeter Stark are watching an abandoned German prisoner-of-war camp on Muskrat Island. One PW is rumored missing at final muster. One day...