Most American teenagers are so preoccupied with MTV-style marketing, that they have little sense of how many young adults around the world struggle to survive. How can US young adults gain compassion and understanding for those in other countries when their viewpoint is so limited? Four recent YA novels about terrorism allow teens to crawl into the skins of characters from different nations where survival means more than having to go to school without the latest designer jeans.
Author Richard Lewis, born and raised in Indonesia by missionary parents, knows well the world he portrays in The Flame Tree (Simon and Schuster, $16.95, ages 12 and up). At the novel's opening, Lewis' twelve-year-old protagonist, Isaac, has a good life in Java. He lives comfortably in the compound of his doctor-missionary parents, knows Javanese, admires the culture and has a close relationship with a Muslim friend from a lower class. His life seems as perfect as the flame tree in his parents' yard.
But there is an uneasiness that make his parents watchful and Isaac feels the tension mount until it erupts in a series of events that grow more and more horrific. These begin with Ismail's devotion to religion and rejection and betrayal of Isaac. Quickly the novel picks up speed and intensity as Isaac saves the hospital when a dead amputee arrives with a bomb planted in his belly. It climaxes when Isaac is captured by terrorists and endures a forced, brutal (graphically described) circumcision.
The first the descriptions of Java are so rich they make it seem like a paradise, those after the terrorist events make the same setting sound like a hell on earth. The novel is full of contrasts like these. There are more obvious dissimilarities like those between the Muslim and Christian belief systems, a group of religious fanatics led by a holy man of peace and the wealth and poverty. There is also a stylistic contrast. At times the novel reads like an adventure-thriller, while at others long passages and scenes seem almost like religious treatises. All the many facets are evocative and thought provoking.
Author Pnina Moed Kass is an American familiar with the Israeli world she describes in Real Time (Clarion, $15.00; ages 11 and up). Over five days, the lives and viewpoints of ten people intersect and interrelate. Focus character, Thomas Wanninger, is a sixteen-year-old German boy who mourns his father's recent death and wonders about his grandfather's shadowy relations with the Nazis. Driven to discover the truth, he signs up to work on a kibbutz not far from Jerusalem. He's greeted at the airport by Vera, a seemingly cheerful Russian emigree, who has her own secrets. She can't forgive the father who abandoned her and the fiance who committed suicide. As they take a bus from airport to kibbutz, we meet another character, Sameh Laham, an illegally-employed Palestinian who plans to martyr himself so that his family can have a better life. A bomb does go off, many bus passengers are killed and Thomas, Sameh and Vera wind up in the hospital.
In the horror of what has occurred, characters heal their secret hurts. Vera understands the love of her family and even Sameh understands that his moral code won't allow him to cause the death of others. Just when you breathe a sigh of relief and get ready to let in the happy ending, a new voice enters. This belongs to a poor boy who has decided to martyr himself. The author has done a remarkable job of intertwining the inner and outer realties of her characters to help readers feel the humanness and precariousness of life in Israel.
Arthur Dorros was inspired to write his novel, Under the Sun (Abrams, $16.95, ages 12 and up), after visiting Children's Village in Croatia, a town rebuilt largely by refugee children. The book's hero is thirteen-year-old Ehmet who's sent out of Sarajevo with his mother to the safe country home of relatives. But after a short respite of playing soccer with a friend, Ehmet returns to hear a seige being waged in the home of his aunt and uncle. They are "disappeared" by the enemy and his mother's left raped and beaten.
Suddenly Ehmet becomes his mother's caretaker and protector. He's their only hope for survival and he soon learns he can't prevent her death. As Ehmet travels alone across a war-torn country, he searches for family and serenity, encountering both brutality and kindness from people of all backgrounds and cultures. This book has all the adventures of a survival book, a main character who is brave and resourceful, and a child's perspective of what it feels like to live in a culturally divided country where right actions are confusing and life is tenuous.
Ben Mikaelsen based Tree Girl (Harpertempest, $16.99, ages 12 and up) on the true story of a young Guatemalan woman. Fifteen-year-old Gabriela is proud of her Mayan heritage and her gift for learning and teaching. She's happy in her large, loving family, happiest of all when she climbs a tree. As her Mami has told her "when you climb a tree, it takes you closer to heaven".
The night of her fifteenth birthday celebration, armed soldiers capture her brother Jorge and life changes suddenly. Her Papi searches for her brother as her mother sickens and dies. He insists Gabi keep going to school. It's there that she and five young students watch soldiers beat their beloved teacher to death. Told they must never speak of what they saw, the children scatter, and the soldiers shoot all but Gabi who avoids death by climbing a tree. She returns to find burned huts and dead bodies in her village and hiding in a bush, her dying brother and her small silent sister. Horrors mount during their flight to refuge camps in Mexico. The worst comes when she tries to find food in a small village and spends two days hiding in a tree, watching soldier separate families, kill children, burn homes, and rape a woman while the sounds of tortured men ring out in the background. This time climbing a tree has brought Gabi "closer to hell" and she vows she will never climb again. The book is an up close look at the genocide of a proud people, but there is a glimmer of hope as Gabi once again climbs a tree, finally hears her sister speak again, and imagines returning to help her people.
All four stories are filled with harsh realities for older readers, for their themes of horror are much stronger than those of hope. But these novels reveal truths largely unknown to American young adults whose awareness might help change the world.