This gut-wrenching tale is marred only by the author's choice to use broken English for both dialogue and description. Arn's chilling history pulls no punches, trusting its readers to cope with the reality of children forced to participate in murder, torture, sexual exploitation and genocide. Arn does what he must to survive-and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country.
McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). 12-15)Ī harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields. Keith Thompson's lively black-and-white illustrations suit perfectly. Though subject to all the weaknesses of steampunk-an exotic East that owes more to Orientalism than to accuracy a romantic and exciting interpretation of exceedingly dark historical periods-it also showcases the genre's strengths: gleeful battles, well-appointed airships, wee clockwork library helpers and sea monsters. It's a racketing adventure, packed with genetically engineered beasties, human-looking machines and nosy American reporters. Alek and Deryn join the intrigues of a multi-ethnic secret society seeking to overthrow the Sultan. The two discover a city caught between Clanker and Darwinist powers, a city using machines and engines as the Germans do but tremulously allied to the beastie-manufacturing British. Alek ends up in Istanbul after a cinematic escape from the airship, while Deryn is stranded there after a top-secret mission. They both have secrets: Deryn, a girl in disguise, serves on a living airship Alek is secretly heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. In this sequel to Leviathan (2009), Deryn and Alek foment revolution at the onset of the Great War.
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