Hutton, Keely Soldier Boy, 326 pages. Farrar Straus Giroux,
2017. $18. Content: Language: G; Mature Content: G; Violence: R.
Fourteen year
old Ricky lives on his family’s plantation in Northern Uganda when he hears
sounds coming from his local village.
Ricky, his brother Patrick, and some of their friends decide to go and
sit at the edge of their property along the road to see if they can find any
news as to what is happening. A man
comes along and seems friendly enough, but then is quickly joined by other
rough looking men. In an instant, Ricky’s
family is murdered and the friends are tied together soon to become child soldiers
for Joseph Kony’s rebel army in 1989.
Woven throughout Ricky’s story, is a young boy named Samuel, who in 2006
after being left for dead on a battlefield is protected by the Friends of Orphans.
This is a heart wrenching read. I couldn’t put it down, but I didn’t want to
pick it up either. I had to know what
happened to Ricky and his brother Patrick, but the life of a child soldier was
so brutal and upsetting it’s hard to read.
This is based on the true story of a child soldier named Ricky Richard
Anywar during the Ugandan Civil War.
Although the violence is not gratuitous or gruesome, it is upsetting. There are many deaths, often of children, and
they are common and torturous. Whole
families are rounded up and burned and there is mention of girls getting raped. This is one boy’s true story from an event
that happened to many teens in Northern Uganda, it’s harrowing and real and
although there is a lot of violence, it’s still advisable for high school.
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