Reviews

Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood: A World War I Tale by Nathan Hale

janeofalltrades's review

adventurous challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

sallyluvs2read's review

adventurous medium-paced

3.0

This graphic novel takes you through the start, during, and end of WWI. The war to end all wars. However, according to the author, WWI changed how future wars are fought.

I like the idea of a graphic novel for young readers to help them understand more about history.

l_myers's review

dark informative fast-paced

5.0

Great information for students of any age!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: War, Violence, Gun violence, and Gore

sngick's review

4.0

There is a ton of information in this book--to the point where my brain felt overloaded.

srbibliotecario's review

4.0

This graphic novel retelling if WWI offers an evenhanded account of The Great War. A strong point was made that there were no "good guys" and "bad guys," just ill-prepared men sent out to fight due to blind nationalism. The animals that represent each nation soften the horrors of the war, but tragedies -- scorched towns left in rubble, a ravine of French skeletons -- are not glossed over. An excellent book for readers interested in either historical nonfiction or graphic novels.

alexcruse's review

3.0

This was fine. I would say it is a decent surface level introduction to World War One. If you don't crave details and some deeper context, you'll be good.

ras1146's review

adventurous informative lighthearted fast-paced

5.0

crizzle's review

5.0

I marked this as both young adult and juvenile fiction because I think with the right reader, this would be great for a 5th or even 4th grader who is interested in wars. My graphic novel-loving 10 year old wasn’t interested (yet). Otherwise, I’d recommend it for middle school and up. As an adult, this is by far the best and most understandable explanation on WWI I’ve ever had. I don’t blame teachers for not covering it; what a mess. “The Great War” was idiotic, but Hale does a masterful job at making it not only coherent (he uses animals to represent the nations, and his maps and concise narrative made the context more clear to me than any big ole text would have done), but also engaging and entertaining. For some reason, the most emotional part for me was when the Belgian librarian pleaded with the Germans not to burn down his building, which stored priceless ancient manuscripts.
In sum, “World War 1 was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth.” - Ernest Hemingway, who served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front.

orangerful's review

5.0

World War I was hard to understand even when people were living through it. You sort of gloss over it in history classes because there is no clear-cut "bad guy" like in World War II. World War I was a mess, not only when it came to who was allied with who, but also because of all the new technology that was emerging so we had lots of different ways to kill each other.

Nathan Hale has managed to condense it all down to 124 pages and it works! I came into this book only knowing WWI from watching Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as a kid and basic high school history lessons. Even though it feels like he is being goofy, assigning different animals to each country really helped keep the players clear.

This is a fantastic introduction to The Great War, for kids, teens, or adults. I know I learned so much.

msrandomstuff_01's review against another edition

adventurous funny informative lighthearted tense fast-paced

5.0