Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

Camouflage endpapers set the stage for Myers's (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Handbook for Boys: A Novel, reviewed below) unusual and gripping picture book set in Vietnam and geared to older readers. "The land of my enemy/ has wide valleys,/ mountains that stretch/ along the far horizon,/ rushing brown rivers,/ and thick green forests," the riveting narrative poem begins. Grifalconi's (the Everett Anderson books) sophisticated mixed-media collage shows a breathtaking vista, lush with trees, jagged mountains and terraced hillsides. On the next spread, Myers drops readers into the jungle with the narrator, a young American soldier, and his squad of nine men. The protagonist makes a nerve-wracking trek ("Somewhere in the forest, hidden in the shadows, is the enemy"), witnesses a bombing raid ("My body shakes./ I tell myself that I will not die on this bright day") and comes face-to-face with an enemy soldier ("In a heartbeat, we have learned too much about each other"—neither fires). Myers, who fought in Vietnam, lays bare the young man's emotions. Short phrases combine power with grace as the author artfully conveys the outward events of warfare and the resulting inner turmoil: in the village, the young man sees "the enemy./ A brown woman with rivers of age etched deeply into her face./ An old man, his eyes heavy with memory." Grifalconi, too, subtly highlights war's absurd contradictions. One particularly striking scene finds the G.I. facing his enemy across a field alight with heartbreakingly lovely flowers and wildlife. Readers will hope this is as close as they ever get to the real thing. Ages 8-12. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(May)

ALA Booklist (Fri Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2002)

Myers' Fallen Angels (1988) remains a landmark YA novel about an American teenager in Vietnam. At 17, Myers was a soldier there; his brother died there. Now, in this spare, poetic picture book for older readers, Myers speaks in the voice of one young soldier who is with his squad during combat in the forest: I am so afraid. With his fear is his awareness of his own violence: I am the enemy. The words express the physicalness of the combat soldier's experience--the crush of his combat boots, the sound of his breath, the sweat on his back. Grifalconi's collages of photos and watercolors are uneven in quality. The best of them extend the sense of fragility by focusing on a leaf, a helmet, a bird against the dense brush and the exploding sky, and prepare readers for the climactic moment when, suddenly, the African American boy comes face to face with an enemy soldier who is as scared as he is. Myers' message is in the lack of drama. There's no heroism, just weariness and waiting for the war to be over.

Horn Book (Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2002)

This is more than an account of how one soldier's perception of a terrible reality is transformed by his recognition of the humanity he shares with his enemy. The fear here is almost palpable, the danger magnified in the imagination because it is anticipated rather than realized. The haunting illustrations and the taut, poetic text unite in a powerful rendering of the way any war ruptures ordinary lives not so different from our own.

Kirkus Reviews

Myers returns to the setting of his award-winning Fallen Angels (1988) with a stunning, unsettling picture book that attempts to put the reader into the heart and mind of an American soldier in Vietnam. The stream-of-consciousness narration takes the reader along on one patrol, as the unnamed grunt picks his way through the landscape, exchanges fire with "the enemy," "secures" a village with the aid of grenades, and is airlifted back to the base. The spare, poetic text is written in the present tense, lending immediacy, and is packed with sensory details: "I lift my rifle and begin to rub the palm of my hand slowly along / its wooden stock. / The weather is hot, but the sweat that runs down my back feels cold." Although the reader is told he moves with his squad, the protagonist seems to exist in psychic isolation and overload as he continually grapples with his uncertain understanding of his place, both physical and moral, relative to his enemy: "Crouched against a tree older than my grandfather, / I imagine the enemy crouching against / a tree older than his grandfather." Grifalconi's ( One of the Problems of Everett Anderson , not reviewed, etc.) collage illustrations are remarkable, and suitably disturbing. A jungle effect is created by overlapping photographs of trees with close-up details of leaves, marbled paper, and negative space—all of which virtually overwhelm the human figures. The effect is claustrophobic and highly disorienting, made all the more so when the reader notices that the foliage is largely North American: maples and spruce appear, frequently with jolly wildflowers in the foreground. The selection of fauna is likewise confused and confusing: on one page, a giant snake rests its coils in the branches of a spruce; on the next, a quail stands next to an egret. These surreal illustrations brilliantly extend the text's central question: just who is the enemy—and why, when he and I are so alike?—in this, the "land of my enemy?" Not exactly a fun read, but highly effective and very important. (Picture book. 8-12)

School Library Journal

Gr 4 Up-Myers's verse powerfully evokes the experiences of a young soldier in this picture book. Searching the unfamiliar landscape, his squad tries to sense the presence of the enemy in the jungle. But who is the enemy? The old man in the village? The babies? Planes pass overhead, dropping bombs "at a distance that is never distant enough." The author captures the young man's fear, uncertainty, and weariness. "We move again. We are always moving." The layers of Grifalconi's full-page collage art conceal and reveal the flickering images of the text. Figures blend into the forest. Shadow and shape converge. The repetition of words and a landscape scene at the beginning and near the end of the book are particularly effective because they are the same except for the addition of fire and plumes of smoke in the "wide valleys" and "thick green forests" after the patrol has finished its mission. These pictures are difficult to erase from one's memory. When the soldier does encounter an enemy as young as himself, neither fires. Close enough to see one another, they cannot kill. "In a heartbeat, we have learned too much about each other." Myers and Grifalconi's presentation is one that is hard to forget.-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State University, Mankato Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.