An Innocent Soldier

1. Author: Josef Holub
2. Title: An Innocent Soldier
3. Illustrator: None
4. Genre: Fiction
5. Subgenre: War
6. Theme: Friendship can pull you through anything.
7. Primary Characters: Adam, Konrad
8. Secondary Characters: The farmer, the farmer's wife, French marshal, Sergeant
9. Award/Date: Batchelder/2002
10. Publisher: Scholastic
11. Summary: Adam is a sixteen-year old boy who was working on a farm. One day, the farmer wakes him up and takes him downtown with him. To Adam's surprise, the farmer has passed Adam off to take Georg's, the farmer's son, place. Despite a terrible start with a sergeant that mistreats him, Lieutenant Konrad, 17, takes Adam as his assistant. Despite their class/rank differences, the story follows their growth into friends and their struggles and triumphs of the french/russian war.
12. How used: This story can teach children the disadvantages of war and the need for friendship. The story is necessarily about a happy topic, but the author uses humor to lighten the mood. Since this is for an older age group, it can teach the children about different styles of authors' writings.