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From Horn Book

January 1, 2015
This adaptation of Hillenbrand's best-selling adult version puts the Louis Zamperini story in teens' hands. Zamperini traded delinquency for adulation, becoming a runner on the 1938 Olympic track team; in WWII he survived a plane crash only to be captured as a POW; after battling alcoholism, he became a Christian crusader. The tension never wavers, creating a humdinger of a page-turner. Ind.

(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

From Horn Book

November 1, 2014
With media attention focused on the July 2014 death of Louis Zamperini, and Angelina Jolie's upcoming movie detailing his WWII experiences, this adaptation of Hillenbrand's best-selling Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption puts the Zamperini story in the hands of many teens not ready or willing to tackle the adult version. Constantly in and out of scrapes as a child, Zamperini appeared to be heading for a life of crime. But Louis traded delinquency for adulation. He became a competitive runner, and gutsy performances earned him a slot on the 1938 Olympic track team. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Air Corps, surviving a plane crash and forty-seven days adrift on a raft only to be captured and interred in various Japanese POW camps until war's end. He returned to California alive but emotionally scarred; after battling alcoholism, he became a Christian crusader. This adaptation eliminates much of the original detail, particularly concerning Zamperini's survival at sea and his time as a POW, and Zamperini's eventual redemption receives fewer edits than other portions of the text -- and thus its impact is more prominent than in the original. But the tension built by his oceanic ordeal and by the unrelenting torture during his years in captivity never wavers, creating a humdinger of a page-turner: a noble story about the courage of America's Greatest Generation, personified. An author interview with Zamperini and (unseen) notes and index are appended. betty carter

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

From Kirkus

September 15, 2014
In response to requests from teachers and school librarians, Hillenbrand offers a young-readers' edition of her best-selling World War II tale of survival. Louis Zamperini grew up in California and was headed toward juvenile delinquency. He smoked at 5, drank at 8, and went on to stealing and pranking, until older brother Pete got Louis into something more productive: running. Louis eventually became a world-class runner, ultimately competing at the 1936 Olympics. With World War II looming, Louis joined the Army Air Corps, and it was with the downing of his B-24 bomber that his harrowing journey began. Adrift in the Pacific Ocean in a raft, attacked by sharks, brutalized as a POW in Japanese slave-labor camps, Louis' is a tale of survival against all odds. This solid adaptation is half the length of the original, more visual (with more, and sometimes larger, photographs), less descriptive and swifter paced, and it avoids such adult themes as the sexual sadism of evil Cpl. Watanabe, the man so intent on destroying Louis in the POW camp outside Tokyo. A fascinating appended interview with Louis Zamperini explores issues of survival and heroism. This fine adaptation ably brings an inspiring tale to younger readers. (notes, index [not seen]) (Nonfiction. 12 & up)

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

From School Library Journal

September 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Adapted from the best-selling adult book of the same name, this riveting account tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a thief turned track star, Olympian, airman, castaway, and prisoner of war. Born to Italian immigrants in 1917, Zamperini was heading down a path of crime (stealing, fighting) until his older brother Pete stepped in, encouraging him to join the track team. It wasn't long before Zamperini was winning every race, eventually going on to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The book details how the 1940 Olympics were canceled due to World War II and describes how Zamperini was drafted into the U.S. Air Force. Writing in a gripping, intense tone, Hillenbrand relates how tragedy struck when Zamperini's plane was shot down and he and two other men spent 47 days in a life boat in the Pacific Ocean, fighting sharks, starvation, and dehydration, before being captured by the Japanese navy as prisoners of war. More than 100 engaging photographs appear throughout. This captivating book emphasizes the importance of determination, the will to survive against impossible odds, and support from family and friends. This adaptation softens some of the harsh details of POW life found in the adult version and has shortened the book by about a third. Though this is a strong, well-written work, the adult version is accessible and engaging; students are better off sticking with the original.-Stephanie Farnlacher, Trace Crossings Elementary School, Hoover, AL

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Booklist

Starred review from September 1, 2014
Grades 8-12 *Starred Review* Growing up in Torrance, California, Louis Zamperini was a wild boy, a rebel who found redemption in running, ultimately competing in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Then, in 1941, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a bombardier, whose plane was shot down over the Pacific. Thus began a remarkable story of survival. For 47 days, he floated on a raft with scant food and water, surrounded by sharks. Finally, he was picked up by Japanese forces and made a prisoner of war. He was routinely and savagely beaten and humiliated by a sadistic guard the other prisoners nicknamed the Bird. Not released until the end of the war, Zamperini returned to the States. There, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and began drinking heavily, until, while attending a Billy Graham crusade, he stopped drinking and began to find peace. This adaptation of Hillenbrand's adult best-seller is highly dramatic and exciting, as well as painful to read as it lays bare man's hellish inhumanity to man. It is inspirational, too, for despite violence, torture, and humiliation, Zamperini never lost his human dignitya necessity, Hillenbrand graphically demonstrates, for survival. Heavily illustrated with black-and-white photographs, this is sure to attract a wide audience, not only of survival story fans but also of those looking for a story of one man's heroic triumph over all odds. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a film adaptation scheduled for December 2014 and a crossover teen audience for the best-selling adult account, this youth edition should have a wide audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

From Booklist

November 1, 2010
A second book by the author of Seabiscuit (2001) would get noticed, even if it werent the enthralling and often grim story of Louie Zamperini. An Olympic runner during the 1930s, he flew B-24s during WWII. Taken prisoner by the Japanese, he endured a captivity harsh even by Japanese standards and was a physical and mental wreck at the end of the war. He was saved by the influence of Billy Graham, who inspired him to turn his life around, and afterward devoted himself to evangelical speeches and founding boys camps. Still alive at 93, Zamperini now works with those Japanese individuals and groups who accept responsibility for Japanese mistreatment of POWs and wish to see Japan and the U.S. reconciled. He submitted to 75 interviews with the author as well as contributing a large mass of personal records. Fortunately, the authors skills are as polished as ever, and like its predecessor, this book has an impossible-to-put-down quality that one commonly associates with good thrillers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This departure from the authors previous best-seller will nevertheless be promoted as necessary reading for the many folks who enjoyed the first one or its movie version.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

From Publisher's Weekly

Starred review from October 11, 2010
From the 1936 Olympics to WWII Japan's most brutal POW camps, Hillenbrand's heart-wrenching new book is thousands of miles and a world away from the racing circuit of her bestselling Seabiscuit. But it's just as much a page-turner, and its hero, Louie Zamperini, is just as loveable: a disciplined champion racer who ran in the Berlin Olympics, he's a wit, a prankster, and a reformed juvenile delinquent who put his thieving skills to good use in the POW camps, In other words, Louie is a total charmer, a lover of lifeâ€"whose will to live is cruelly tested when he becomes an Army Air Corps bombardier in 1941. The young Italian-American from Torrance, Calif., was expected to be the first to run a four-minute mile. After an astonishing but losing race at the 1936 Olympics, Louie was hoping for gold in the 1940 games. But war ended those dreams forever. In May 1943 his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. After a record-breaking 47 days adrift on a shark-encircled life raft with his pal and pilot, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips, they were captured by the Japanese. In the "theater of cruelty" that was the Japanese POW camp network, Louie landed in the cruelest theaters of all: Omori and Naoetsu, under the control of Corp. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a pathologically brutal sadist (called the Bird by camp inmates) who never killed his victims outrightâ€"his pleasure came from their slow, unending torment. After one beating, as Watanabe left Louie's cell, Louie saw on his face a "soft languor.... It was an expression of sexual rapture." And Louie, with his defiant and unbreakable spirit, was Watanabe's victim of choice. By war's end, Louie was near death. When Naoetsu was liberated in mid-August 1945, a depleted Louie's only thought was "I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!" But as Hillenbrand shows, Louie was not yet free. Even as, returning stateside, he impulsively married the beautiful Cynthia Applewhite and tried to build a life, Louie remained in the Bird's clutches, haunted in his dreams, drinking to forget, and obsessed with vengeance. In one of several sections where Hillenbrand steps back for a larger view, she writes movingly of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD sufferers. With no help for their as yet unrecognized illness, Hillenbrand says, "there was no one right way to peace; each man had to find his own path...." The book's final section is the story of how, with Cynthia's help, Louie found his path. It is impossible to condense the rich, granular detail of Hillenbrand's narrative of the atrocities committed (one man was exhibited naked in a Tokyo zoo for the Japanese to "gawk at his filthy, sore-encrusted body") against American POWs in Japan, and the courage of Louie and his fellow POWs, who made attempts on Watanabe's life, committed sabotage, and risked their own lives to save others. Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story (he's now in his 90s), she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption. (Nov.) -Reviewed by Sarah F. Gold

From Library Journal

October 1, 2010

The author of Seabiscuit now brings us a biography of World War II prisoner of war survivor Louis Zamperini (b. 1917). A track athlete at the 1936 Munich Olympics, Zamperini became a B-24 crewman in the U.S. Army Air Force. When his plane went down in the Pacific in 1943, he spent 47 days in a life raft, then was picked up by a Japanese ship and survived starvation and torture in labor camps. Eventually repatriated, he had a spiritual rebirth and returned to Japan to promote forgiveness and healing. Because of the author's popularity, libraries will want this book both for general readers who like a good story and for World War II history buffs; however, it's not essential reading for those who read Zamperini's autobiography, Devil at My Heels, with David Rensin, in its 2003 edition. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/10.]

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Kirkus

September 1, 2010

The author of Seabiscuit (2001) returns with another dynamic, well-researched story of guts overcoming odds.

Hillenbrand examines the life of Louis Zamperini, an American airman who, after his bomber crashed in the Pacific during World War II, survived 47 days on a life raft only to be captured by Japanese soldiers and subjected to inhuman treatment for the next two years at a series of POW camps. That his life spiraled out of control when he returned home to the United States is understandable. However, he was able to turn it around after meeting Billy Graham, and he became a Christian speaker and traveled to Japan to forgive his tormentors. The author reconstructs Zamperini's wild youth, when his hot temper, insubordination, and bold pranks seemed to foretell a future life of crime. His talents as a runner, however, changed all that, getting him to the 1936 Olympics and to the University of Southern California, where he was a star of the track team. When the story turns to World War II, Hillenbrand expands her narrative to include men who served with him in the Air Corps in the Pacific. Through letters and interviews, she brings to life not just the men who were with Zamperini on the life raft and in the Japanese camps, but the families they left behind. The suffering of the men is often difficult to read, for the details of starvation, thirst and shark attacks are followed by the specifics of the brutalities inflicted by the Japanese, particularly the sadistic Mutsuhiro Watanabe, who seemed dedicated to making Zamperini's life unbearable. Hillenbrand follows Watanabe's life after the Japanese surrender, providing the perfect foil to Zamperini's. When Zamperini wrote to his former tormentor to forgive him and attempted to meet him in person, Watanabe rejected him. Throughout are photographs of World War II bombers, POW camps, Zamperini and his fellow GIs and their families and sweethearts, providing a glimpse into a bygone era. Zamperini is still thriving at age 93.

Alternately stomach-wrenching, anger-arousing and spirit-lifting—and always gripping.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

From AudioFile Magazine

Both author Laura Hillenbrand and narrator Edward Herrmann share the muse for biography. Hillenbrand (SEABISCUIT) captures the particulars of a captured WWII bomber pilot's travails of surviving torture and deprivation beyond our abilities to imagine. Keeping in the background, Herrmann avoids upstaging this intimate memoir, loaded with enticing psychological detail. He modulates his voice to communicate emotion, reading the many moments of sadness with respect. Without resorting to the annoying convention of pauses before quotes or conjuring up comedic characters, he conveys multiple personalities and their quotations with subliminal ease. The writer and narrator integrate their talents to bring the life of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent, Olympic athlete, and decorated combat hero--into suspenseful reality. To the end, they keep the story engrossing. J.A.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine