Kiss the Dust

by Elizabeth Laird

Overview

Tara is an ordinary teenager. Although her country, Kurdistan, is caught up in a war, the fighting seems far away. It hasn't really touched her. Until now. The secret police are closing in. Tara and her family must flee to the mountains with only the few things they can carry. It is a hard and dangerous journey—but their struggles have only just begun. Will anywhere feel like home again?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509826728
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Publication date:	10/01/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	850L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 14 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth Laird is the multi-award-winning author of several much-loved children's books, including A Little Piece of Ground and Jake's Tower. She has been shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie Medal six times.

Editorial Reviews

"Weaves compelling facts about the conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds into a gripping tale about one family's escape to freedom." —Publishers Weekly starred review


"An important contribution to the growing number of refugee stories." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

Laird weaves compelling facts about the conflicts between the Arabs and the Kurds into her gripping tale about one family's escape to freedom. After witnessing a teen's brutal murder and meeting a wounded revolutionary, 12-year-old Tara begins to realize the extent of persecution in her native Iraq. When her Kurdish father is sought by the secret police, Tara and her family abandon their home and head north to the mountains. Their refuge is short-lived, however; bombs begin to drop and they flee across the Iranian border to a primitive refugee camp. Stripped of their dignity and still not out of danger, the family plots to leave the continent, despite slim chances of asylum. The author personalizes the Kurdish experience by sensitively portraying Tara's feelings of loss, degradation and uprootedness. Although some readers may find the girl's initial naivete as hard to swallow as her abrupt awakening to violence, most will overlook these minor weaknesses as the story's tension rapidly mounts. Even those familiar with political problems in Iraq and Iran may be shocked by the graphic depiction of tyranny--and may sense that despite their hardships, Tara's family fares better than many people who risk their lives for independence. Ages 10-up. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 6-8-- A fictional account of a Kurdish family during the Iran-Iraq War in the mid-1980s, when many Iraqi Kurds who had been struggling to establish a homeland were forced to take refuge in Iran and other countries. Laird focuses on 13-year-old Tara, an urban girl who finds herself fleeing with her family from Iraqi secret police, then living in a wartorn village and surviving in an Iranian relocation camp before finally escaping to England. While Laird dispels many of the stereotypes young people may have of the Middle East by showing Tara as a thoroughly modern girl who loves to ride in her family's Mercedes or watch her VCR, there are times when observations about Kurdish heritage and struggle emphasize differences in clothes rather than examining ideology or religion. Often, cliched phrases are jarring distractions from the location and mood of the story. Still, the author clearly shows the changes wrought in a young girl who comes to an awareness of the struggles of her people and leaves behind the comfortable, spoiled existence she'd known. Because Tara remains connected to her family at all times, and rides in a car and shops during excursions from the relocation camp, Laird's account of Tara's plight may sound, at times, less desperate and frightening then other refugee novels that focus on separation and severe deprivation, such as Tamar Bergman's Along the Tracks (Houghton, 1991). But in some ways those contemporary elements may have even more impact for readers who will be forced to realize that atrocities are not relegated to the past and that freedom is not easily won.-- Susan Knorr, Milwaukee Public Library, WI

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