Dawn and Dusk [Hardcover]

Alice Mead (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

For as long as thirteen-year-old Azad can remember, the Islamic Republic of Iran, where he lives in the predominantly Kurdish town of Sardasht, has been at war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and his country has been a harsh society full of spies, secrets, and "disappearances." Still, most of the time Azad manages to live a normal life, hanging out at the bakery next door, going to school with his friend Hiwa, playing sports, and taking care of his parrot. Then Azad learns that his town may soon become a target for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Now more than ever, Azad feels torn between his divorced parents and his conflicting desires to remain in his home or escape. His father is somehow connected to the police and is rooted in the town. His mother may be part of the insurgency, yet is ready to flee. How can Azad make the choice?
 
The story of how one boy's world was turned upside down in 1987 Iran is a timely and memorable introduction to the conflicts in the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5–9—Thirteen-year-old Azad, an Iranian Kurd, narrates Mead's affecting tale of life during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The repressive regime of Ayatollah Khomeini has already torn Azad's family apart. An only child who has lived with his father during the six years following his parents' divorce, he learns in the course of the novel that his mother left the family because his father, driven by fear, became an informer for the secret police. Along with this familial tension, the Kurds' untenable situation also undergirds the story. This ethnic group lives in double jeopardy, distrusted by their own government and hated by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Azad is fortunate in being able to spend time with each of his parents and in being able to leave his home in Sardasht for the rural village where his grandmother lives. The galvanizing event of the months covered by the novel is Hussein's gassing of Sardasht, which leads Azad, his mother, and other family members to flee Iran for Turkey. Like Elizabeth Laird and Sonia Nimr's A Little Piece of Ground (Haymarket, 2006), Dawn and Dusk is a tale of children caught in the horror of war, seen from the side of the conflict considered most hostile to American interests. Azad is an appealing protagonist, and it is his simple and direct story that will draw readers through the complexities of a multinational ethnic longing for self-determination that remains at the heart of an international tinderbox.—Coop Renner, Hillside Elementary, El Paso, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In 1987 Saddam Hussein bombed the Kurds in the town of Sardasht, Iran, with chemical weapons he obtained from the West. This short docu-novel tells the horrifying story through the fictional first-person narrative of Azad, 13, a Kurdish boy, who survives the bombing and finally flees across the border to Turkey with part of his family. His dad stays behind. Azad knows that his father is an informer for Iran's dreaded secret police, but when Dad even betrays his own wife, she leaves him. The politics, though sometimes confusing, is part of the drama, and the secrets and lies break up families and separate friends. After his lavish, three-day Kurdish wedding, Azad's uncle Mohammad is driven to join the Kurdish resistance. What will his family do while he is gone? Most moving is Azad's bleak relationship with his father, a traitor, defeated and drunk. As in her novel Girl of Kosovo (2001), Mead brings home the tragedy of war through the experiences of one young teen. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 151 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); First Edition edition (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374317089
• ISBN-13: 978-0374317089
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,309,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I had an unusually healthy childhood-sailing across the ocean on a steamship at age 7, visiting England,Scotland, and Norway, and playing endlessly with my dollhouse, which perhaps eventually lead to writing many books for children. Because I live in a refugee resettlement city Portland, ME, I wrote about displaced kids from war areas, Sudan, Kurdistan, and Kosovo. I was also an art teacher. The book, Soldier Mom, now 20 years old, was written during the first Gulf War, when we suddenly used a "reserve" army instead of an enlisted one. I had two active sons, dogs, rabbit, chameleon, hamster and later assisted 40 Kosova high school students. I loved gardening, painting, reading. But suddenly began to hurt everywhere, falling, weak. Nothing helped.I had to leave my job as an art teacher but was still able to write.
Nearly twenty years (plus a bout with severe cancer) into feeling weak, I now know I have Myasthenia Gravis, a neuromuscular disease that affects your eyes, breathing, endurance and speech.
I still write, paint, sing, practice my standup comedy, and take photographs. Really nothing inside me has changed at all. I fight to improve, laugh over the silliness of ordinary life, and am curious about all sorts of things.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, August 7, 2007

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dawn and Dusk (Hardcover)

DAWN AND DUSK by Alice Mead is a compelling work of fiction that is a timely read for youth of the 21st Century.

Azad is a pre-teen, Kurdish boy living in Iran along the Iraq border in the late '80's during the Iran-Iraq war. To make the lives of his people even more trying, the Kurds are despised in their own country as well as Iraq. This sad fact of life inspires many to join a resistance movement against the Ayatollah's regime, putting their lives in danger. When Azad's town is bombed with Iraqi chemical weapons, he retreats to his mother's home in the mountains of Kurdistan.

The heart of this story - in spite of its foreign setting - is one of universal concerns for young people. Azad's parents are divorced and he has mixed feelings for both his mom and dad. Who is to blame for his broken home?

He feels abandoned by his mom, who moved far away after the divorce, but he wonders if the rumors are true about his father. Is he really an informer for the Iranian secret police? Did his mother leave because she is a member of the resistance? His struggles with his family situation combine with his feelings of alienation as a Kurd. Many young people will identify with Azad's concerns.

Although the ending is a bit too tidy for realistic fiction, Mead's resolution keeps DAWN AND DUSK acceptable for its targeted young audience. This novel is extremely well-written and has an authentic sense of place. Four stars.

Reviewed by: Mark Frye, author and reviewer