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Working closely with Ricky himself, debut author Keely Hutton has written an eye-opening book about a boy's unbreakable spirit and indomitable courage in the face of unimaginable horror.
Soldier Boy begins with the story of Ricky Richard Anywar, abducted at age fourteen in 1989 to fight with Joseph Kony's rebel army in Uganda's decades-long civil war. Ricky is trained, armed, and forced to fight government soldiers alongside his brutal kidnappers, but never stops dreaming of escape.
The story continues twenty years later, with a fictionalized character named Samuel, representative of the thousands of child soldiers Ricky eventually helped rehabilitate as founder of the internationally acclaimed charity Friends of Orphans.
"Starred Review. Hutton approaches the setting, conflict, and characters with unremitting honesty, drawing from Anywar's own life (he contributes an afterword) while using the fictional Samuel as a stand-in for the current generation of unwilling soldiers ... Eye-opening and relevant." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A visceral indictment of man's inhumanity to man while also celebrating human beings' ability to empathize and to rescue those who desperately need saving. Grades 5-8." - Booklist
"A story that stands up for the unrelenting power of the human spirit to reject evil, the nigh-impossible odds that must be conquered to escape enslavement, and the deep scars that remain for a lifetime ... Unapologetically searing and catastrophically truthful." - Kirkus
"Over the years I have read many novels and memoirs about children and warfare in modern Africa, but Soldier Boy stands out as one of the very best. Based on actual historical events, this compelling novel is a story of great violence and pain, but it is also one of tremendous strength, courage, and resilience. I will definitely be assigning it to my students for many years to come." - Alicia Catharine Decker, Associate Professor, Pennsylvania State University, author of In Idi Amin's Shadow: Women, Gender, and Militarism in Uganda
This information about Soldier Boy was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Keely Hutton is an educational journalist and former teacher. She is the recipient of the Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop scholarship at Chautauqua. Since 2012, she has been working closely with Ricky Richard Anywar to tell his story. Soldier Boy is her first novel.
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