YA Literature- World Events week

As I was browsing at Borders a few weeks ago, I ran across the book, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The book is the story of Ishmael Beah, who as a twelve year, witnessed the killing of his family and village in Sierre Leon. Ismael is forced to go into hiding with his buddies to srurvive, finding discarded food and living in the forests, always on the go. Ishmael was able to flee the rebel soldiers for two years, experiencing hardship after hardship; Seeing other villages destroyed, other thirteen year boy's bodies piled along the river, shot, bloodied, and killed, as well as experiencing the death and burial of a close friend, who was in his company. The book speaks of the hardship of war from the eyes of a youhg boy, who survived. Eventually, Ishmael is captured by the rebel soldiers and forced into their army.. He does so, just to survive. And here in their ranks, he becomes a soldier, forced to kill and commit the same atrocities he witnessed. Beah was rescued bu UNICEF when he was sixteen and relocated to the United States, where he completed his high school education, and then graduated from Oberlin College in 2004. since then, he has served on several UN committees speaking on behalf of children affected by war.
I remember reading Johnny Got His Gun as a teen , being horrfied about war. I feel the same way today. A Long Way Gone, chilled me in the same manner. Beah's work is honest, and brutal as many war books are, but more convincing in that he not only witnessed, and participated but yet, survived.