Child Soldiers: Nonfiction

Now that I've finished Beasts of No Nation, I have many questions, as do other Readers, I'm sure, about child soldiers and am ready to turn to nonfiction for some answers.  Here are some suggestions,

First, Amnesty International has created a curriculum guide to accompany the book Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers go to War by Jimmie Briggs.

Another nonfiction book on the subject is P.W. Singer's Children at War.  You can get a sense of the book from this video presentation (30 minute talk plus 30 minutes of Q&A).  I found this very informative. 




Or, try this half-hour interview with Singer on NPR's Fresh Air.  Some related material is also available at his Brookings page. (Singer will show up as an expert in Shadow Company as well.)

One other note, Amnesty has also collaborated with the creators of Innocent Voices, a film about child soldiers in El Salvador released last fall.  An article about student responses to the film can be found in the current issue of the Fourth R, the newsletter of Amnesty's Human Rights Educators Network (download pdf here). As far as I can tell, the film is not yet available on DVD.

Tags: child soldiers, teaching resources

For January: Bitter Grounds

For January we have selected Sandra Benitez' Bitter Grounds:

Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.

Epic in scope, richly steeped in history, Bentez's poetic yet unsentimental novel takes you into another time, another place, and into the lives of characters so real they cannot be forgotten.