D-Day: The World War II Invasion that Changed History (Scholastic Focus) - Softcover

Deborah Hopkinson is the highly acclaimed author of thrilling, accessible, and compelling nonfiction for every reader. She has written over forty award-winning books, including Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist and Sibert Honor Book; D-Day: The World War II Invasion that Changed History; We Had to be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport, which was a Kids' Book Choice Award Nominee and a Sydney Taylor Notable Book; NCTE/Orbis Pictus Recommended Book, We Must Not Forget; the forthcoming Race Against Death; and her series for Grades 2-5, The Deadliest, which are action-packed, photo-filled nonfiction titles about disasters throughout history. Deborah lives outside Portland, Oregon.

"'Look, men, look! It's the fleet.'" At the sergeant's voice, paratrooper David Kenyon Webster peered out the window of the rumbling C-47 plane and caught his breath. "'Man, oh man.'"The clouds had slid off the moon to reveal an extraordinary sight. "Five hundred feet below, spread out for miles on the moonlit sea, were scores and scores of landing barges, destroyers, cruisers, and attack transports," said David. "They were bearing the infantry slowly east, like a flood of lava, to a dawn assault on the shingle shore of Normandy."He turned back around. "I stared at the men opposite me in the racketing, vibrating, oil-reeking, vomit-scented darkness... My stomach tightened and filled with ice, and a voice told me to get ready."'It's coming,' the voice said, 'it's coming.'"Not much longer now. The paratroopers of E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, were set to jump before one in the morning. They had just a few hours to clear the way for infantry soldiers landing on Utah Beach at dawn. Their mission: to destroy German gun nests and take control of four causeways leading off the beach over a mile of lowlands the enemy had flooded as a defensive measure.These tracks were the only ways off the beach. If Americans controlled them, the thousands of soldiers landing on the beachhead would be able to move inland, seal off the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, and move north into it to capture the port of Cherbourg. It could make the difference between gaining a real foothold in France -- or being stalled on the shore, giving Germany more time to rush in reinforcements for a counterattack.