WOW Review: Volume XVI, Issue 1 • Page 3 of 11 • Worlds of Words

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team
Written by Christina Soontornvat
Candlewick Press, 2020, 280 pp
ISBN: 9781536209457

In this picture-packed nonfiction account of a breaking news story that took place in 2018, Christina Soontornvat relays the unbelievable details of a lost soccer team that turned into a global rescue mission. The tween-to-teenage Wild Boar soccer team from Mae Sai, Thailand, decided to take a few hours in the afternoon one day to explore the region’s famous Tham Luang cave system, known in English as The Cave of the Sleeping Lady. What they didn’t expect, however, was the unseasonable rain that was about to drench the entire region for months to come. The strong rain continued for days, trapping twelve soccer players and their coach a mile deep into Tham Luang. Because the cave itself was overfilled with water, regular caving experts were not able to retrieve the boys, so cave diving specialists were brought on the scene from around the world. Soontornvat describes what a truly international effort it became, bringing in cavers from Thailand, British sump divers, and the US Air Force, plus search-and-rescue experts from Vietnam, China, and Australia. Along with those professional workers, thousands of volunteers pooled their resources, time, expertise, and care into the mission. Over the course of the 18 days that the boys were trapped inside the cave, the story transformed from a local catastrophe into a worldwide, 24/7 news thriller televised in most countries across the world. After the boys made it out of the cave, everyone wanted an opportunity to talk with the bravest soccer team ever, including Christina Soontornvat.

One of the most significant and expectation-defying aspects of this book is the way in which it reinforces the cultural difference between the U.S. and many other countries in the world. American culture is highly individualistic, with a sharp and innate focus on the self, for better or worse. This story highlights the fact that not all the world is like that, with Thailand being a prime example. The way the entire country banded together with a sense of urgency, as though every citizen had a son stuck in that cave, was remarkable, and Soontornvat captured this phenomenon distinctly and beautifully. In chapter 21, she writes “the mountain now swells with ten thousand people: rescue workers, divers, military personnel, monks, medics, and the scores of volunteers supporting them.” Soontornvat also does a great job identifying the ways in which news and media companies tracked the story.

Soontornvat crafts an engaging reading experience that subverts the status quo for chapter books of this length. The book is 280 pages long, yet packed with vivid photographs, illustrations, maps, and diagrams that–coupled together with the gripping narrative–keep the reader fully immersed in the story. The supplemental materials give the book more potential educational value and cement the book as a strong single candidate for learning about the story that so much of the world was watching when it happened.

This book would pair well with other books that fit into similar themes and topics, such as books about collectivist Thai culture or the power of family in Thailand. Books about natural disasters or the power of community to respond to those disasters could be useful as well, such as Don Brown’s graphic novel Drowned City (2017) or Jesse Joshua Watson’s Hope for Haiti (2010), a picturebook about the resiliency of a culture’s response to earthquakes. One more potentially compatible topic could be the various kinds of first responders, as lots of niche examples of those appear in this book.

Christina Soontornvat is a Thai-American writer and lifelong-learner in various fields. She holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in science education and has won awards such as the Newbery Honor Award, The Washington Post Best Book of the Year award, and Kirkus Prize for Young People’s Literature. She loves the STEM field and wants to continue serving her readers through a diverse array of topics.

Ethan Ashworth, Trinity International University

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