Remote Corners of the Globe

How much smaller is our world than it used to be? Back in the early 90s, I read Tuva or Bust! by Ralph Leighton. Fascinated by the triangular stamps of Tuva and the funny spelling of its capital city, Kyzyl, Leighton and family friend Richard Feynman decide to visit the country. Not only is Feynman one of the most famous and important physicists ever, he was a larger-than-life character, known for late-night bongo sessions and an expansive curiosity.

In the book, tracking down the most basic information about or photographs of Tuva takes a huge amount of work. Leighton and his friends are searching for books at the Library of Congress and in university libraries around the world. It takes months to exchange letters with colleagues in Tuva -- and almost as long just to find their names and addresses. It takes years for them to get permission to visit Tuva and to make the travel arrangements, in large part because the Cold War was still in full swing in the late 70s and early 80s, with the Soviet Union keeping firm control of which foreigners entered their country and where they went. This story wouldn't be a story now. Finding information about a small remote city and locating people there would take minutes and not months. While traveling to and within the Soviet Union and China was extremely difficult 30 years ago, it's not only easier but common and unremarkable now.

There are still a handful of places in the world that would present similar challenges to the traveler. North Korea comes to mind, as does Burma, which is where Mitali Perkins' Bamboo People is set.

The book tells the separate stories of two boys. The first is an educated 15-year-old who is forced to join the Burmese army. Conditions are poor for these young men, but generally not shocking or horrific. Chicko is bright and manages to team up with another soldier who is less educated but more "street-smart," and together the two are able to endure and even find a few ways to improve their situations. Halfway through the book, Chicko runs into trouble on the Burmese-Thai border, and the narration shifts. The second half of the story is told by a Karenni boy, Tu Reh. His family are members of a Burmese ethnic minority, forced from their home by Burmese soldiers and now living in a refugee camp on the Thai side of the border.  Tu Reh's difficult choices force him to link his destiny to that of Chicko, who represents the very people who destroyed his village. The story is skillful and engaging on many levels. While the setting of Burma, a country that has been largely closed off to westerners for many years, is one that is almost certainly not familiar to most American students, the problems of child soldiers and ethnic warfare are more well-known. More importantly for a work of fiction, the universal themes are the strongest. These boys, on the verge of adulthood, struggle with decisions that affect themselves as well as their families and broader community.

Children of War in Southeast Asia

I picked up Patricia McCormick's latest, Never Fall Down, and had left it sitting on my table for a couple of weeks. It was not the easiest book to start. It is based on the true story of Arn Chorn-Pond, who lands in a Khmer Rouge labor camp at the age of 11, becomes a child soldier, eventually landing in the United States as a teenager.

As in other McCormick books, there are chilling details, with horrifying tales of the Killing Fields. Moreover, McCormick tells the story in the first person in a sort of patois that takes a little getting used to. I questioned her choice at first, but in the end, it did lend an authenticity to the story that effectively personalized it. Reading the book, you know that Arn will survive, which makes it more bearable, and I did have to skip ahead to some acknowledgements at the end to figure out if some other key characters survived. Arn is more than a survivor though, he is someone who seems to have a force of life in him that not only allows him to live, but that also shines on others and helps them to get by in the face of unbelievable odds. While some survive by shrinking into the background, Arn has an ability to focus on the one thing in each setting that will put him in the spotlight and make him a person that everyone wants to be around. Another element of the book that struck me was how both family relationships and those that are developed in the course of crisis sustain Arn and the others. Sometimes the slightest human contact or support is enough to allow them to, as he put it, "never fall down."

There is a bit of context provided in the end, but I would have liked the publisher to have included a map and a little background information, as few kids, and not many more adults, are familiar with the history of Cambodia in the 1970s.

There seems to be more supplementary information provided with Mitali Perkins' Bamboo People, which is coming up soon on my reading list. Set in modern-day Burma, it tells a story about two young boys on opposite sides of a conflict between the Burmese government and an ethnic minority, the Karenni. From what I can gather, it manages to grapple with issues of child soldiers and ongoing attempts by governments to suppress the educated class (touched on in Never Fall Down) in a story that is suited for middle-school students. I have really enjoyed Perkins' other stories, but they typically had female protagonists and this one has boys and is set in a different place than her others, so I am really looking forward to reading it. It could be a good choice for either classroom use or for next year's summer reading list at our school.