Use these questions to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. You will be reading a short story titled “In the Shadow of War.” What books, movies, or other stories do you know that are set during a war? What elements do the stories have in common? What themes do they explore? How does a wartime setting affect the characters in the stories?

Teaching Suggestion: Before students address the prompt, you might brainstorm a list of fictional war stories together as a class. After students have responded to the prompt, consider asking them to share the war-related themes they identified. You might ask them to keep these themes in mind as they read “In the Shadow of War” to see if the story explores any of them and, if so, how the events of the plot convey the themes.

• This article published by the Illinois Library Association describes how war literature has evolved over time and how it reveals the moral ambiguities of war.
• UNICEF’s collection of poems by young people affected by war expresses many common themes about the effect of war on civilians.