Girl of Kosovo [Hardcover]

Alice Mead (Author)

Book Description

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

A child's perspective on war.

In 1998 the Serb military intensifies its efforts to expel Albanians from Kosovo. Ethnic cleansing forces many families to seek safety in the surrounding hills and mountains. The Kosovo Liberation Army fights back guerrilla style, struggling for an independent Kosovo. Some Albanian villagers support the freedom fighters. Others fear that armed resistance, which they have successfully avoided through long years of Serb repression, will only increase the death toll. And always there is terrible tension between Serbian and Albanian neighbors who once were friends. Eleven-year-old Zana Dugolli, an Albanian Kosovar, isn't sure what to think. She does know not to speak her language to Serbs. And every day she worries about her mother and father, her brothers, the farm, the apple orchard. Already she has lost her best friend, a Serb. Then Zana's village is shelled, and her worst nightmare is realized. Her father and two brothers are killed in the attack, and her leg is shattered by shrapnel. Alone in a Serb hospital, she remembers her father's words: "Don't let them fill your heart with hate."

Based on a true story, Alice Mead's stark, affecting novel about a place and conflict she knows well will help young readers understand the war in Kosovo.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"How was it that foreigners could come take pictures of us when we were dead, but couldn't come to help us stay alive?" Eleven-year-old Zana Dugolli doesn't understand how the rest of the world can send reporters to record the violence that is inflicted daily on Kosovo-born Albanians by the brutal Serbian military, yet do nothing to stop it. In the late 1990s, Zana's rural village is targeted when the Serbian ruling class steps up its efforts to completely wipe out ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Unbelievingly, she watches as a bomb explodes right in front of her, killing her father and two brothers. Zana's own leg is shattered by the blast, and the physical pain added to the grief of losing half her family is almost more than she can bear. Sick with fear, Zana wonders how much longer she, her mother, and her remaining brother can face the demoralizing effects of so much hate. "All I knew was that I was slowly losing my life. I felt betrayed by everyone and everything. I couldn't trust the ground itself. If a bomb fell on it, it could swallow me whole."

Alice Mead, author of the much-lauded Adem's Cross, continues to draw attention to the horrific Serbian-Albanian conflict with Girl of Kosovo. Brutal and moving, this novel is sure to stir the activist that lives in the heart of every teen and propel young readers to a greater understanding of race, war, and politics. (Ages 10 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly

As in her Adem's Cross, Mead places a human face on the Kosovo crisis by focusing on an Albanian family ravaged by war. Even after her father and brothers are killed and her leg is gravely injured in a Serb attack, 11-year-old Zana, the narrator, struggles to heed her father's advice: "Don't let them fill your heart with hate. Whatever happens." Zana's friendship with a Serbian girl, Lena, and her trip behind enemy lines to a hospital in Belgrade provide Zana with evidence of kindness to weigh against the brutality in the Serb faction, while her cowardly KLA uncle Vizar illuminates weaknesses among the Albanians. Mead puts the war into a context that young readers will understand. The family watches sports on ESPN and Zana's brother plays Nintendo; at the same time, they bury guns and food and sleep in their clothes, poised to retreat. Through Zana, the author stresses the random cruelty of the war in Kosovo, and her anger stretches to include foreign journalists: "How was it that foreigners could come take pictures of us when we were dead, but couldn't come to help us stay alive? I wanted to let the air out of their fancy tires so they would be stuck here, trapped the way we were." The ending is a little convenient (Zana helps save Lena's family from the vengeful hatred of their Albanian neighbors), but most readers will find the story powerful and hard-hitting. Ages 10-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); 1st edition (April 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374326207
• ISBN-13: 978-0374326203
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,068,126 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful fiction about Kosovo for children and YA, August 3, 2001

By 

Michelle (Chattanooga, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl of Kosovo (Hardcover)

This is an excellent introduction for children about the recent struggles in Kosovo. The heart-wrenching account of Zana and her family during the volatile period surrounding the war in Kosovo, should draw interest and concern to the children reading this book. The story is based on an actual family as described in the "author's note." I wish a map of the area was included with the place names as a reference. Most children are probably unaware of the unfortunate violence in Kosovo's history. The story is a page-turner and a building block to learn more about current events. A good modern realism for children and young adults.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars girl of kosovo, December 2, 2003

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Girl of Kosovo (Hardcover)

This book was so amazing and was sp great to read. it explains about a albanian girl back in the late 1990s who is struggling through a racist war between the serbs and the albanians. With her father and two of her brothers already fead she struggles with depression friendship and hope to stay alive, also a tragic beginning of her leg that was practically blow off. I loved this book so much anyone who reads it will love it so much.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good plot, poorly written, March 22, 2003

By 

Someone Special (Middleton, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl of Kosovo (Hardcover)

I picked this book up at a bookstore because I am Albanian myself and wanted to know more about the conflict in Kosovo. This book has a good plot, Zana, an Albanian girl, witnesses the hatred targeted towards her and other Albanians in Kosovo by the Serbs. Even after they have killed her father and two brothers, she tries to remember what her father told her before he was killed, "Don't let them fill your heart with hate". And to make the story more interesting, Zana has a Serbian friend. However, Alice Mead's writing style is very amateur. Even after Zana's father and brothers were killed, she doesn't slow the story down. It seems like she is trying to hurry the story along.