An urgent, timely narrative.
When helicopters of the Sit Tat, Myanmar’s army, arrive in their northern Rakhine province town, 14-year-old Hasina fears for her family and their Rohingya Muslim community.
State broadcasts depict the Rohingya as “Chittagonian Bengali Muslims,” foreign terrorists, and attempt to pit Buddhist and Muslim neighbors against one another. When the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army clashes with the Sit Tat, the latter immediately retaliates with violence, burning Rohingya homes. Hasina, her 6-year-old brother, and her 13-year-old cousin, flee into the forest, her father charging Hasina to keep them all safe and promising to come for them. But after days in the forest avoiding soldiers, the children make their way back only to find the adults gone, possibly rounded up. As Hasina desperately seeks to learn where the adults have been taken or if they are even alive, she must also figure out how the children can survive and stay safe even as people try to exploit them—or worse. In this novel, Burmese Australian author Aung Thin introduces young readers to the plight of the Rohingya, alluding to the horrors and violence of targeted persecution while also addressing how decades of authoritarian and military rule have affected the entirety of the country. An abrupt ending jars readers but emphasizes that for children in conflict zones, safety is elusive. Characters are Rohingya, Mro, and Burmese; Islamic terms are localized to both Rohingya language and context.
An urgent, timely narrative. (author’s note, timeline, glossary, resources) (Fiction. 11-15)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77321-397-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Groups considering mounting productions that go beyond the popular musicals may want to consider looking at this uneven but...
Newly created plays for young people are not published very often, so this collection merits some attention.
The four dramas, commissioned by the well-respected Minneapolis Children’s Theater Company, are about growing up in ethnically diverse communities, but the plays cover different sets of problems for their young protagonists. Esperanza Rising, loosely adapted from the novel by Pam Muñoz Ryan, is set during the Depression, when Mexican immigrants competed with Okies for agricultural jobs in California. Esperanza changes from a pampered rich girl into a hard worker. The others are very contemporary. In Average Family, a reality-TV contest brings the wealthy Minneapolis Roubidoux family back to a Native American lifestyle they have never known. Also set in Minneapolis, the strongest play (at least on the page), Snapshot Silhouette, features a resilient Somali refugee, Najma, who finds both her voice and a new friend when she moves in with a well-meaning African American mother and her disaffected daughter; they are struggling as a family after the murder of an older daughter. Sasha, an isolated child of a Russian immigrant, finally gets to know her neighbors when she goes looking for a pen to write a research paper on the eponymous Brooklyn Bridge, the most artificial selection.
Groups considering mounting productions that go beyond the popular musicals may want to consider looking at this uneven but thought-provoking anthology. (Drama. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8166-7313-1
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this...
After moving to a rural Australian town, Sasha’s unwelcome premonitions lead her to solve a string of art thefts while tackling her own issues.
Ever since her mum left, Sasha’s “life has turned into a huge, weird disaster area.” The sad, anxious Sasha knows her dad’s trying hard to hold the family together. When he accepts a police job in Manna Creek to “make a new life,” Sasha decides she’ll give “moving to the back of nowhere” a chance, just to make him happy. Unimpressed with the drab town, the bedraggled house behind the police station and the hostile locals who resent the new cop’s kids, Sasha and younger brother Nicky explore with their new pet police dog, King. Sasha’s freaked out when she finds that she and King can communicate telepathically and even more upset when she starts dreaming about local people, past and present, who are about to die. Is there something wrong with her? Should she tell her father or repress everything? In an authentic first-person voice, Sasha fumes at her missing mum, reacts negatively to Manna Creek, supports her father and brother and conveys her fears about her telepathic powers as she leads the tense, fast-moving plot to resolution.
A stronger-than-she-realizes heroine uses her disconcerting telepathic gifts to help others and heal herself in this satisfying adventure. (Paranormal adventure. 11-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61067-063-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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