Liza M. Wiemer

The Assignment

Liza Wiemer

In the vein of the classic The Wave and inspired by a real-life incident, this riveting novel explores discrimination and antisemitism and reveals their dangerous impact. SENIOR YEAR. When an assignment given by a favorite teacher instructs a group of students to argue for the Final Solution, a euphemism used to describe the Nazi plan for the genocide of the Jewish people, Logan March and Cade Crawford are horrified. Their teacher cannot seriously expect anyone to complete an assignment that fuels intolerance and discrimination. Logan and Cade decide they must take a stand. As the school administration addressed the teens' refusal to participate in the appalling debate, the student body, their parents, and the larger community are forced to face the issue as well. The situation explodes, and acrimony and anger result. What does it take for intolerance, justice, and love to prevail?

trixie

it’s hard for me to think about how many people in this world still think like the bigots in this book. i am on the struggle bus.

Lacy W

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tw: anti semtic comments (constant throughout the book), racism toward Black people, homophobia, violence against Jewish people, descriptions of propaganda, cyber bullying

I originally had no plans of reading this book. It didn’t quite appeal to me when I read the synopsis. However, this book haunted me. Everytime I would pursue Overdrive to find a book instead of reading the hundreds of books I currently own, this book was right there. Eventually I just decided to check it out and I’m glad I did. This was a great book and I think it’s very important to read. 

Let’s preface this review with a little story so to speak. I had a history teacher that I loved. Mr. H sparked my love of history and I’m forever grateful to him for doing that. He was a great teacher and a lot of my classmates enjoyed him as a teacher because he was kind. You could go up to him and chat if you were having problems. He made boring parts of history fun and tricky parts of history easy to understand. He was a great teacher and I’m sad that due to sucky circumstances (don’t worry, nothing bad. Just budget cuts. You got to love small schools), he was let go when I was a senior. My siblings never got to experience him and that’s upsetting. 

I bring up Mr. H because this is exactly how students in this book felt about their teacher, Mr. B. If Mr. H had assigned this assignment, of supporting or being against the Final Solution, I would have lost my mind. For those that might not be aware, the Final Solution is the Nazi’s soluation to the “Jewish problem”. It was to be a total destruction of the Jewish people and those deemed unworthy in the eyes of Nazis. I would have felt the exact same way Logan and Cade felt and I, too, would have been faced with the tough decision of reporting the teacher. 

What’s truly mind boggling is that this is based on a true story. This assignment was given in a school in New York. Other types (like supporting slavery) of assignments like this were and are given all over the United States. I just want to know in what world did this teacher, or any teacher that assigns assignments like this, think this would be okay? There is already so much hate in this world and this just fuels the fire. There is no rational reason to assign these assignments. There are plenty of ways to creatively teach about the horrible parts of history without having to do assignments like this. I spent most of this book just shocked that the teacher, the principal and members of the community were okay with this. 

Besides the plot of this book, there were other parts I enjoyed. I enjoyed the way the book was laid out. There were Cade and Logan chapters but there were also chapters of other characters that were a part of the story. Some probably weren’t needed but they added freshness to the story. Some chapters were text messages, phone calls set up like text messages and facetime conversations. It made the book seem fresh, more modern. 

The one negative I have to say about this book is the romance blossoming between Cade and Logan didn’t really need to happen. I love books where a boy and a girl are best friends and that’s that. I wish this book had this but it’s okay. Their romance kind of got in the way of a much more important story. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it, but it felt wrong given the plot. 

Overall, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s so important and it brings up topics that we need to talk about. While the romance between Cade and Logan was a bit of a distraction, this book was still incredibly good. It’s a shame that it doesn’t have more reviews and more people should be aware of this amazing book.

Based on an actual assignment given at an upstate New York school and the two students who stood up against it, The Assignment explores the imperative to resist actions that (sometimes unknowingly) leave the door open to bigotry and violence. I think Weimer did a very good job at fictionalizing the situation, exploring a multitude of voices in their community who all brought a different perspective to the incident. The primary focus was on Logan and Cade as they attempted to induce their teacher to cancel the assignment, but a multitude of other perspectives were presented as well, including other students in their class, their teacher, their principal, and various observes both within their community and outside of it. My opinion on the the sheer number of perspectives is somewhat mixed - on the one hand it's valuable to see how other people are reacting to the situation, especially the other students who aren't speaking out but don't like the assignment either and their reasons for staying silent. It really emphasizes how dangerous taking a stand can be, why some people don't feel safe doing so, and the imperative for people to take a stand against injustice from a position of privilege or safety on behalf of those who can't. At the same time, there were a lot of different perspectives and some of them are only present for a short 2-3 page chapter. Sometimes those chapters were a little jarring, especially as we got closer to the end and got totally new perspectives, because you had to readjust every time the perspective changed. 

I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 for two reasons. The first is that I found the romance between Logan and Cade to be totally unnecessary. It very much felt like it was included in the story because every book has to pair off a girl and a boy because ~reasons~ and I hate that. The romance didn't actually add anything to the book as a whole, it was just an unnecessary side plot and it could have been cut and the heart of the story would be exactly the same. The second was the valorization of the American military. Very late in the book, joining the military was presented to one of the bigoted students in Logan and Cade's class as a positive way for him to channel his energy. I absolutely cannot overstate how horrible of an idea that is. The American military is a hotbed of white supremacy and joining it is not going to mitigate that student's bigotry and aggression, it's going to exacerbate it. I very much do not like the idea that young men who are deep in the mindset of toxic masculinity should channel the anger and aggression that toxic masculinity encourages into military action. It's just not a healthy or safe option, especially for the civilians who are caught in the military's crossfire everyday.

The Assignment

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