Friday, October 3, 2008

Chanda's Wars by Alan Stratton

This compelling book tells the story of Chanda, who due to her mother's recent death, is responsible for the well-being of her brother and sister. Encouraged to make amends with her estranged family, Chanda travels to a nearby town from which her brother and sister are stolen by a group of rebels. This book is, in large part, a book about child soldiers in war-torn Africa. More than that, however, this is a family story and one of courage and adventure. The narrative is well-constructed and Stratton keeps you wondering with each page what is going to happen. This book gets a Thumbs Up from me. Though this is a follow-up book to Chanda's Secret it certainly does stand alone. I did not read the first book and still found this one to be incredibly moving.

1 comment:

Katie said...

I also will give this a YAY. I was really excited to find out what happened to Chanda after her mother's death in Chanda's Secrets (CS). I liked this sequel and actually found the writing to be better than that of CS, but I felt that it asked for a bit of a stretch to have this happen to Chanda as well as everything that transpired in CS. In this sense, I actually feel that it has more strength as a stand alone than as the logical sequel to CS.
In all it was well-written, timely, and important--so, like I said, Yay.