Journey of dreams by Marge Pellegrino
Frances Lincoln
Children's Books, 2009. ISBN 9781845079642
(Ages 12+) With planes overhead dropping poison to
deforest the land, young men rounded up and taken by the guerillas and
the army
to bolster their numbers, and mother railing against the civil war
around them,
the village is in turmoil. But when one of her sons is taken, mother
and her
younger son escape to Mexico. Father and the other three children
escape the
village as the guerilla army moves in, killing everyone and burning it
down.
Their escape route to Mexico is fraught with danger as they must elude
the
forces ever at their heels and the bureaucracy which seeks to send them
back. All the while they must be canny enough to avoid the pitfalls
which besiege
all those
on the refugee route to another land.
A heart stopping survival story of a young
girl and her family fleeing the war in Guatemala, Journey
of Dreams is about every refugee, forced from their home
and country by war beyond their power and understanding. This books
takes the
reader into a little known war in a continent few of us are even aware
of. It
would sit well in a study of refugees which might include books like
Mahtab's Story (Libby Gleeson),
Soraya the
storyteller (Rosanne Hawke),
and the Parvana trilogy (Deborah
Ellis).
Fran Knight