Honour Book
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
2007 CBCA Awards
Winner
Elsie Locke Award
2007 Library & Information Association New Zealand Aotearoa Children's Book Awards
FInalist
Non-Fiction Award
2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards
black dog books' award-winning history series The Drum uses first-person accounts and non-fiction to bring history roaring to life.
The Vietnam War was like no other the Australians and New Zealanders had fought. There was no front-line, no safe zone, no glory. In the jungles the Vietcong seemed to be everywhere, and nowhere — and winning.
To find the Vietcong, a country was torn apart. In questioning why they were there, Australia and New Zealand almost tore themselves apart.
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$199.40 Purchase the Drum series value pack (Total RRP $265.86)
The author adopts quite a chatty tone as she very successfully 'makes history come alive' and takes readers through the eight centuries of social, political, and cultural world history haunted by the terrors of The Plague, The Death, The Pestilence. Comprehensively researched historical information is interspersed with some gripping 'Imagine you are there' segments: diary entries and letters written by fictional characters who are about fourteen.
— Elspeth Cameron, Reading Time
This text offers excellent insights into medieval society as well as human nature in general and would be certain to spark lively classroom discussions about medieval European life for high school students learning about this period of history.
— Susan Whelan, Suite101
This well-designed book will provide a valuable resource for young people for whom the Vietnam War is ancient history... This is good training for children to learn to question ‘truth’ in history.
— Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards 2007 (Eve Pownall Award for Information Books Shortlisting)
Well focused, undistracted account of the origins and nature of the war... Davidson puts the reader at one with the soldiers... a compelling book written with a deft touch.
— Viewpoint
Leon Davidson’s Red Haze shows what the war was like for the people who actually experienced it.
— Good Reading
Davidson is fair-minded and has no trouble conceding the military superiority of the Vietcong
— The Sydney Morning Herald
This is a well written book, presenting both sides in accessible language for teens.
— Otago Daily Times
Red Haze is a valuable introduction to a conflict otherwise not often found in books for younger readers
— The Sunday Age
Red Haze is a valuable edition to the middle school library
— Classroom
Red Haze provides a valuable insight into the Australian and New Zealand role in the Vietnam War
— Teacher
