"Well, what I wanted was to be alone.
On my eleventh birthday, I finally made
it happen.
I began my escape with a lie to my teacher.
I got her attention in the schoolyard as she
was trying to collect permission slips, check
off names on a clipboard, hand out luggage
tags and get twenty-eight kids and their stuff
loaded onto a school bus."
I began my escape with a lie to my teacher.
I got her attention in the schoolyard as she
was trying to collect permission slips, check
off names on a clipboard, hand out luggage
tags and get twenty-eight kids and their stuff
loaded onto a school bus."
Deborah Ellis is a master storyteller, always thoughtful and sympathetic to the children whose stories she tells. In this book she writes ten stories about children who are celebrating their eleventh birthday. Her main characters live in countries around the world. As I read them, I was trying to imagine what an 11-year-old in the Ukraine might be thinking on her/his birthday today.
Each of the celebrants in these stories have connections to their families, their friends, and the neighborhood where they live. Eleven is a time when things being to change for many young people. Their circumstances are varied: responsibility within a family, helping neighbors in need of food, learning something awful about a parent, surviving a boat trip with other refugees, taking a stand against exploitation, and helping a sister in trouble.
The stories exhibit compassion, hope, critical thinking, and consideration for children in all parts of the world. If you haven't yet read this book's companion collection Sit, don't just sit there! Check it out at the library, buy it at your favorite bookstore, or ask a friend. While you are doing that, ask to see if they have a copy of Lunch with Lenin as well.
* All royalties from the sale of STEP will be donated to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which works to aid and protect people forced to flee their homes due to violence, conflict and persecution.
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