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Balzer + Bray
May 2012
On Sale: May 8, 2012
244 pages ISBN: 0061730939 EAN: 9780061730931 Kindle: B0068M2GK6 Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life | Young Adult
When soldiers arrive at his hometown in Cambodia, Arn is
just a kid, dancing to rock 'n' roll, hustling for spare
change, and selling ice cream with his brother. But after
the soldiers march the entire population into the
countryside, his life is changed forever. Arn is separated
from his family and assigned to a labor camp: working in the
rice paddies under a blazing sun, he sees the other
children, weak from hunger, malaria, or sheer exhaustion,
dying before his eyes. He sees prisoners marched to a nearby
mango grove, never to return. And he learns to be invisible
to the sadistic Khmer Rouge, who can give or take away life
on a whim. One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids can play an
instrument. Arn's never played a note in his life, but he
volunteers. In order to survive, he must quickly master the
strange revolutionary songs the soldiers demand—and steal
food to keep the other kids alive. This decision will save
his life, but it will pull him into the very center of what
we know today as the Killing Fields. And just as the country
is about to be liberated from the Khmer Rouge, Arn is handed
a gun and forced to become a soldier. He lives by the simple
credo: Over and over I tell myself one thing: never fall down. Based on the true story of Arn Chorn-Pond, this is an
achingly raw and powerful novel about a child of war who
becomes a man of peace, from National Book Award finalist
Patricia McCormick.
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