From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up–This novel is presented in parallel, first-person accounts (or story lines) that begin prior to September 11, 2001, and culminate some months later. Dawn is a runaway from California headed for New York City. She is resentful of her foster mother, a doctor with the Red Cross who is helping in a refugee camp near Pakistan. Johar, 15, lives in Afghanistan. Many of his relatives are dead. His aunt, a teacher, has disappeared. The Taliban has taken his brother, and Johar is left to care for his three-year-old cousin. He flees to escape the danger. The days tick by to September 11th, when Dawn arrives in New York, and everyday life in America shifts. The teens' lives unfold in alternating chapters, and the contrast between their daily experiences is huge. Dawn, a gifted musician, panhandles on the street and, later, plays her flute for mourners at ground zero. She lands a nice place to stay as she cat-sits for a traveling journalist and jams with a hunky rock star. In sharp contrast, Johar's life is dire, tough, and eerily credible. Torturing, mutilating, and killing are the rule. He makes it to the refugee camp where Dawn's mother is working. The teens develop an e-mail friendship, which seems too predetermined and artificial. Much of the plot, particularly the elements that revolve around Dawn, is just too implausible. The contrived ending is unrealistic and disappointing.
–Alison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gr. 9-12. The "refugees" in Stine's powerful first novel for young adults (see adjacent Story behind the Story) are teens who flee deprivation and conflict as disparate as their countries. Sixteen-year-old Dawn is unhappy in California with foster parents Louise and Victor. After Louise leaves for Afghanistan to work as a refugee-camp doctor, Dawn runs away with her best friend, Jude, a gay teen. They land in New York City, and two days later, on September 11, terrorists attack the World Trade Center. Across the world, Afghan teen Johar has escaped his village and found safety in a Pakistani refugee camp, where he lands a job at Louise's clinic. Then Dawn tries to contact Louise, and Johar answers the phone. In phone calls and e-mails, the teens share their stories, and through their love of music and poetry, they help each other find the hope and courage to move forward. In vivid, alternating chapters Stine follows the teens' flights and tense struggles to cope with the tragedies of the attacks, rebuild their families, and discover their own strengths. Not all the characters in the crowded narrative are developed; Victor, in particular, is a puzzling shadow. Still, Stine tells an ambitious, haunting story that asks urgent questions about current conflicts, the human lives behind the headlines, and the healing that must follow. Afterwords about post-9/11 Afghanistan and New York City close this timely, accomplished novel that teachers and teens will want to discuss together.
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
