Brief Review: THE ENEMY Davide Cali/ Serge Bloch [Vol. 3, #4]

A Brief Review of

The Enemy: A Book About Peace.
Davide Cali.
Illustrated by Serge Bloch.
Hardcover: Schwartz and Wade, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

Review by Libby Bowling (Age 11).

[ There is an excellent preview of this book on Google Books! ]

The Enemy written by Davide Cali and illustrated by Serge Bloch is a book that I found particularly good. It is about two soldiers who are enemies, and they both think the other person is a horrible creature that has no mercy. Each is focused on killing the other, while really, they both want to go home to their families — the families that they are trying to protect by killing the enemy. They think that the enemy will kill their family along with their pets if they allow themselves to die in the war.

The book is written as if it were a journal; it is easy to understand, and is a good book for children and adults alike.

The pictures in this book are also very simple and have little color, but are great just the same. They look as if they have been penciled onto the page, and almost the only color in them are the army uniforms that are roughly colored in green. However, the pictures go well with the words in the book because they look as if they appear as if they are also part of the journal.

The soldiers’ lives in this book were horrible. They were both hungry and tired and desperate; they are completely lost in their efforts to blast each other to smithereens, but those efforts lead them to do something that they never considered.   The end of this book has a surprising twist through which the enemies become friends.  The book reminds its readers of the pointlessness of going to war and fighting people who are just like you.

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C. Christopher Smith

C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com