Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.
Annotation:
Little boys shouldn't have to defend their country. They shouldn't be taking drugs or shooting off AK-47s or using RPGs, but that is whats happening. Twelve year old Ishmael Beah lives in Sierra Leon a country in which he and other children are soldiers defending their country from rebels. This is a real account of what happened to Ismael during the war that ravished his country.
Justification for Nomination:
I like that this book is based on a real person and real life events. It is important that young adults learn about the terrors that young adults their age face in other countries. It is important that they learn not from textbooks, but from a person who was their age and had been through war. It was nice that Ishmael mixed the negative memories of war with the positive memories of his family and friends. This made it a lot better for me to read because it wasn't just focused on the negative aspects of war. Beah's life as a child during the war in Sierra Leon is heart wrenching. I can't imagine children shooting guns and taking people from their villages against their will. This makes me think about how much influence war has on children. In Beah's mind, it was killed or be killed. Only an adult should have that thought in times of war and not children. The deepest part of Ishmael's story for me was his account of the violence that he saw and took a part in. He shot people and didn't care that he did it. He writes about how he only killed out of hate and anger for the rebels who killed his family and friends. Only later in the story does he show any kind of remorse for the things he did. Ishmael's words flow together like poetry. There is just so much emotion in this novel that I could literally feel it with Ishmael. He had anger for his enemies, sadness for the loss of his family, and happiness when he was around his friends. All I could feel was sadness because even though he felt all of these different kinds of feelings, I just felt sad for him and his country. It was hard to read this novel because of the negative impact on the children and the adults in Sierra Leon. No one could trust anyone in a country where villages used to trust each other. As I have mentioned I enjoyed this novel, but there was so much violence in it that I could picture it in my head and the thought of children shooting people in the head and babies being killed is enough to give me nightmares. I think that this is an important part of the story. This shows the reality of war and we need to be given all of the details in order to fully understand the war that the people of Sierra Leon are facing. I felt that the sentence structure was slow, but not boring. Ishmael's vocabulary brings a lot of emotions to its readers and although I felt just sadness, I think that other readers will find other emotions within themselves when they read this novel. I loved the happy ending. Any child, especially a child that was a soldier, who goes through war and escapes from it deserves nothing but happiness. Putting a timeline in the novel was brilliant. This way readers can fully understand the actual details and events of the war. 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier' is a beautifully told story of war. This novel teaches us to love our families and friends and to hold them close, it teaches us to stay strong in horrible situations, and most importantly it teaches readers to never forget that there are children out there that are going through the same thing that Ishmael Beah went through. This was my justification for the heart wrenching novel 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.'
Category Genre: Alex Award Winner, Biography
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