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Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier

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Annotation: Harrowing memoir of the author's life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone is also a powerful indictment of this all-too-common abuse of children in wartime.

Catalog Number: #13827

Details

Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux

Pages: 229 p.

Available: Yes

ISBN: 0-374-10523-5

Dewey: 092

LCCN: 2006017101

Dimensions: 21 cm.

Binding Type: Perma-Bound

Subject Heading: Beah, Ishmael,. 1980-, Child soldiers. Sierra Leone. Biography, Sierra Leone. History. 1991-Civil War. Personal narratives, Sierra Leone. History. 1991-Civil War. Participation. Biography, Sierra Leone. Social conditions. 1961-

Language: english

Reviewing Agencies: School Library Journal, Voice of Youth Advocates, Wilson's High School Catalog

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Word Count: 80,413

Reading Level: 6.1

Interest Level: 9+

Accelerated Reader: reading level: 6.1 / points: 13.0 / quiz: 112792 / grade: UG

Reading Counts!: reading level: 8.1 / points:20.0

Lexile: 920

Harrowing memoir of the author's life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone is also a powerful indictment of this all-too-common abuse of children in wartime. This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. n I A LONG WAY GONE, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This gripping story by a children's-rights advocate recounts his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy equally thrilled by causing mischief as by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip-hop videos, was a typical precocious 12-year-old. But rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving him to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels. The first two thirds of his memoir are frightening: how easy it is for a normal boy to transform into someone as addicted to killing as he is to the cocaine that the army makes readily available. But an abrupt change occurred a few years later when agents from the United Nations pulled him out of the army and placed him in a rehabilitation center. Anger and hate slowly faded away, and readers see the first glimmers of Beah's work as an advocate. Told in a conversational, accessible style, this powerful record of war ends as a beacon to all teens experiencing violence around them by showing them that there are other ways to survive than by adding to the chaos.-Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

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