The great-granddaughter of Iran’s last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.
Hospitalized with the dreaded atom bomb disease, leukemia, a child in Hiroshima races against time to fold one thousand paper cranes to verify the legend that by doing so a sick person will become healthy.
In 1991, ten-year-old Nadja begins writing to her cousin in Minnesota, and over the next four years, her letters reveal the horrors of war in this former republic of Yugoslavia, while her cousin’s letters give Nadja and her family some hope.
Traces the causes, events, and aftermath of the Mexican War, including quotes from contemporary sources and discussions of the social and political climate of the country at the time.
When Tatjana was ten years old, Nazi Germany declared war on Russia. Enduring terrible conditions and near-starvation in workcamps, Tatjana survived through liberation, but had more obstacles to overcome before fulfilling her dream to become a teacher.
It’s New Zealand, 1914, and the biggest war has just broken out in Europe. William eagerly enlists for the army but his younger brother, Edmund, is a conscientious objector and refuses to fight. While William trains to be a soldier, Edmund is arrested. Both brothers will end up on the bloody battlefields of France, but their journeys there are very different. And what they experience at the front line will challenge the beliefs that led them there.
Only eighteen when she is sent to Afghanistan, British army medic Elinor Nielson is continually at odds with her hardnosed bunkmate, Heidi Larson, but connects with a mysterious Afghan girl and local children, as well as an American lieutenant.
Since its publication in 2000, hundreds of thousands of children all over the world have read and loved The Breadwinner. By reading the story of eleven-year-old Parvana and her struggles living under the terror of the Taliban, young readers came to know the plight of children in Afghanistan.But what has happened to Afghanistan’s children since the fall of the Taliban in 2001? In 2011, Deborah Ellis went to Kabul to find out. She interviewed children who spoke about their lives now. They are still living in a country torn apart by war. Violence and oppression still exist, particularly affecting the lives of girls, but the kids are weathering their lives with courage and optimism: “I was incredibly impressed by the sense of urgency these kids have needing to get as much education and life experience and fun as they can, because they never know when the boom is going to be lowered on them again.”The two dozen or so children featured in the book range in age from ten to seventeen. Many are girls Deb met through projects funded by Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, the organization that is supported by royalties from The Breadwinner Trilogy. Parvana’s Fund provides grants towards education projects for Afghan women and children, including schools, libraries and literacy programs.All royalties from the sale of Kids of Kabul will also go to Women for Women in Afghanistan. Aftermatter includes a map, glossary, a short history of Afghanistan and suggestions for further reading/resources.
Featured in Volume VI, Issue 1 of WOW Review.
In the summer of 1940, a young English boy whose family is separated by the war, has a dream that he saves his father’s life.
Riese has never been happy as a princess; she’d much rather be hunting or fighting than sitting through another lesson on court etiquette. When she meets Micah, a wandering artist with a mysterious past, she pretends to be a peasant–it’s a chance to be just a normal girl with a normal boy for a while. But with war decimating her once-proud nation and the sinister clockwork Sect infiltrating her mother’s court, Riese’s moments with Micah are the only islands of sanity left in a world gone mad. As her kingdom falls and the Sect grows ever stronger, will Riese remain true to her duty as a princess…or risk everything on a boy she barely knows?