December 7, 2020
Through a grant, “Extra Credit” Caleb Arnett has secured top-of-the-line gaming computers for Ironville Middle School, a largely white institution whose football team was cut due to funding, and he’s now one of the inaugural members of the school’s eSports club. With teacher approval, the kids, including team captains Emma Lopez and Gavin Morgenstern, select The Good War—a WWII game in which players take the sides of Axis or Allies. The students react in various ways to their new knowledge of Nazism: after a few weeks, Gavin’s team asks to be Axis for every round, and they begin trying out German accents and clothes, seemingly unaware of these actions’ implications. Online, an older white supremacist begins grooming one of the players, employing hateful rhetoric that coincides with outside intrusions of Nazi slogans and images into the club’s chat box and matches. Strasser (The Summer of ’69) packs a lot into this brief tale—while his damning of hate groups is anything but subtle, by using a gaming lens to explore the students’ entrée to prejudice and radicalization, he succeeds in lending immediacy and accessibility to his cautionary tale. Ages 10–up. Agent: Stephen Barbara, InkWell Management.
