Tag Archives: World War I

Though Poppies Grow

Book Cover of The War to End All Wars by Russell Freedman

Every year on Remembrance Day, we remember the sacrifices made in World War I. I’ve written about it several times before with children’s picture books: The Eleventh Hour by Jacques Goldstein (reviewed here), Why? by Nikolai Popov and Terrible Things by Eve Bunting (reviewed here), and Once a Shepherd by Glenda Millard & Phil Lesnie (reviewed here), all titles I still recommend for all ages for Remembrance Day and beyond. But truth be told, I’m not much of a history buff: I didn’t pay that much attention in grade 10 Canadian history, and it kind of only came to me this year that I don’t actually know/remember what the causes of WWI were (yikes, I know). I remembered that there were several underlying causes that made the conditions ripe for the explosion of war with one event (though what that event was, I had also forgotten), but the details were lost to me. So if you, like me, weren’t paying attention in Canadian history class back in high school, let’s revisit the causes that led up to the Great War together as we remember those who lost their lives to the war.

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