Published: Tuesday, May. 29, 2012
sacbee.com
Never Fall Down
By Patricia McCormick
HarperCollins, $18, 219 pages, ages 14 and up
Arn Chorn-Pond with his flute.
During this past decade young adult readers have gone wild for dystopian fiction like "The Hunger Games." Now Patricia McCormick gives them a chance to read a tale of real horror.
With stunning clarity and a courageous voice, the award-winning author and journalist has crafted an eyewitness-like account of a boy surviving four years of unrelenting nightmares at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Her historical fiction grew from extensive research and hundreds of hours of interviews of Arn Chorn Pond. He was 11 years old when the Khmer Rouge entered his village in April 1975. Because Arn's story is real, its shocking brutality overshadows any dark fiction on the market. "Never Fall Down" is a tough read, but McCormick has an ulterior motive in capturing this genocide for young readers. More on that later.
Watch the movie about Arn Chorn Pond: The Flute Player.
For Arn, life moved at a relatively happy pace before April 1975. He and his siblings lived with a poor aunt while his widowed mother worked far away in Phnom Penh. His family had owned an opera company until his father died in a motorcycle accident.
Arn, a conniving little sneak, often skipped school to sell ice cream for extra money, which he gambled into a modest income.
His sly ways served him well after the Khmer Rouge soldiers herd the entire village population into the fields to work camps. The soldiers take everyone's clothes and possessions and give them black pajamas. The people must work all day in the rice fields, go to meetings at night and live on very little food or sleep. The soldiers separate families.
Arn winds up on his own, but not before his aunt, who's been adding dirt to the rice to make it thicker, advises the children, "Be like the grass. Bend low, bend low, then bend lower. … That is the way to survive."
McCormick captures this horrific period with bone-chilling emotions in the unforgettable voice of a boy who ekes his way to manhood by doing whatever it takes to survive. He volunteers to play music in a death camp when he doesn't know a note. He keeps himself from falling down no matter how weak or frightened he feels.
Toward the end of his four years, when the Khmer Rouge force a gun in his hands and order him to be a soldier, Arn acts on the rumor he's heard about walking through the jungle, which is full of land mines, to cross the Thai border.
Readers won't be able to stop turning the pages of McCormick's excellent portrait of courage. She wrote Arn's story in his own voice, which gives the novel authenticity. Arn's character matures into a focused man who learns to deal with his life experiences and uses them to tell the world what happened in Cambodia.
McCormick wrote this story with the hope that it would help today's young adults understand genocide and maybe guide them to work for peace.
HarperCollins, $18, 219 pages, ages 14 and up
During this past decade young adult readers have gone wild for dystopian fiction like "The Hunger Games." Now Patricia McCormick gives them a chance to read a tale of real horror.
With stunning clarity and a courageous voice, the award-winning author and journalist has crafted an eyewitness-like account of a boy surviving four years of unrelenting nightmares at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Her historical fiction grew from extensive research and hundreds of hours of interviews of Arn Chorn Pond. He was 11 years old when the Khmer Rouge entered his village in April 1975. Because Arn's story is real, its shocking brutality overshadows any dark fiction on the market. "Never Fall Down" is a tough read, but McCormick has an ulterior motive in capturing this genocide for young readers. More on that later.
Watch the movie about Arn Chorn Pond: The Flute Player.
For Arn, life moved at a relatively happy pace before April 1975. He and his siblings lived with a poor aunt while his widowed mother worked far away in Phnom Penh. His family had owned an opera company until his father died in a motorcycle accident.
Arn, a conniving little sneak, often skipped school to sell ice cream for extra money, which he gambled into a modest income.
His sly ways served him well after the Khmer Rouge soldiers herd the entire village population into the fields to work camps. The soldiers take everyone's clothes and possessions and give them black pajamas. The people must work all day in the rice fields, go to meetings at night and live on very little food or sleep. The soldiers separate families.
Arn winds up on his own, but not before his aunt, who's been adding dirt to the rice to make it thicker, advises the children, "Be like the grass. Bend low, bend low, then bend lower. … That is the way to survive."
McCormick captures this horrific period with bone-chilling emotions in the unforgettable voice of a boy who ekes his way to manhood by doing whatever it takes to survive. He volunteers to play music in a death camp when he doesn't know a note. He keeps himself from falling down no matter how weak or frightened he feels.
Toward the end of his four years, when the Khmer Rouge force a gun in his hands and order him to be a soldier, Arn acts on the rumor he's heard about walking through the jungle, which is full of land mines, to cross the Thai border.
Readers won't be able to stop turning the pages of McCormick's excellent portrait of courage. She wrote Arn's story in his own voice, which gives the novel authenticity. Arn's character matures into a focused man who learns to deal with his life experiences and uses them to tell the world what happened in Cambodia.
McCormick wrote this story with the hope that it would help today's young adults understand genocide and maybe guide them to work for peace.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/29/4520594/the-young-library-horrific-real.html#storylink=cpy
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