Child Soldier

There is an ironic page in Child Soldier showing the narrator/protagonist, Michel Chikwanine, riding his Canadian school bus, living in two worlds at one time. The students around him are complaining about things privileged Western kids complain about: parents, phones, homework. They are oblivious to the fact that sitting amongst them is a boy who has survived unthinkable torture a world away. This page also serves as a wry rejoinder to my immediate concern about the book’s being too graphic for young readers. It’s tempting to think we are protecting a child by shielding them from a story of a boy losing his childhood.

His childhood was lost in one afternoon. Chickwanine narrates (with co-author Jessica Dee Humphreys) in the first person the series of astounding atrocities he suffered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including being kidnapped and forced to serve as a child-soldier in a militia at age five; being drugged intravenously with a knife; killing other children, including his best friend; having soldiers invade his home and terrorize his family; losing his father and a sister in the unending political upheaval in that country. I keep thinking, Be warned–the details are explicit here, and then remember that this boy really lived this stuff. The details are indeed grim, and the book  targets older readers, up to age fourteen.

Child Soldier will be published by Kids Can Press (a frequent visitor to my posts) in September, and tells its gruesome though ultimately inspiring story in 48 pages.