Reviews for Chanda's Wars

The average rating for Chanda's Wars based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-08 00:00:00 Marilyn Kobulnicky Hi, I'm the author of CHANDA'S WARS and I love meeting readers. If you'd like to ask me anything about this book, feel free to email me either through this website or at my website: www.allanstratton.com CHANDA'S WARS is about Chanda, Kabelo, a teenager in SubSaharan Africa whose young brother and sister kidnapped to become child soldiers. Together with a troubled young trapper, she risks her life in the bush to find them and bring them home. It's a story not just about a literal war, but about the multiple battles Chanda faces with family and traditions in her struggle for identity and personal independence. I wrote CHANDA'S WARS because of the love I developed for Chanda and her family while writing the Printz Honor Book CHANDA'S SECRETS. I wanted to know what happened to them all. Then one night I woke up out of a horrible dream filled with flames and screams. I knew immediately that little Soly and Iris had been kidnapped to become child soldiers, and that I, as Chanda, would have to find a way to save them. To write the novel, I traveled to SubSahara and met with former child soldiers and their rehabilitators, with the Dr. Philip Lancaster, executive to General Dallaire during the Rwandan genocide, and many others. I also went into the bush to learn survival skills first-hand, so that the book would be authentic. I care about Chanda and her family very much. I hope you will too.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-26 00:00:00 Robert Wotton Stratton provides an author's note/thanks at the end that make it clear he did his research and talked to a lot of people to make his characters and setting as authentic as possible, but I'm just not as comfortable reading this as I thought I would be because the author is a white man. The recent #ownvoices movement on Twitter has made a difference in how I read and I really feel this story would be better told if it were #ownvoices and set in real African countries instead of fictional ones. Just not for me. DNF #6 of 2017.