 |
Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
|
|||||||
 |
Kamara,
Mariatu.
THE BITE OF THE MANGO New York : Annick Press, 2008 IL YA ISBN 1554511593 |
|
|
This is a powerful true story of a young girl, Mariatu Kamara, who suffered atrocities at the hands of rebel soldiers in her homeland of Sierra Leone during the 1990s. She had a typical happy childhood in her rural village, but then when she is 11 years old, militant soldiers invade and she is forced to watch them torture and murder people she knows. Mariatu is finally allowed to go free—but only after boy soldiers chop off both her hands with a machete: “We want you to go to the president and show him what we did to you. You won’t be able to vote for him now” they tell her. Mariatu survives a long, arduous walk to get medical care and while in the hospital she finds out that at 12-years-old, she is pregnant. Mariatu is reduced to begging on the streets, but then foreign journalists come to Sierra Leone and help her begin to rebuild her life. This raw narrative will touch readers’ hearts. (Patty McClune) (Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award nominee, 2011) |
| SUBJECTS:
Kamara, Mariatu.
War victims. Amputees. Women -- Biography. Sierra Leone -- History. |
Except where
otherwise noted, content on this site is
