![Image de couverture de Lost Girl Found [electronic resource] :](https://images.yourcloudlibrary.com/delivery/img?type=DOCUMENTIMAGE&documentID=d6of1r9&token=nobody "Image de couverture de Lost Girl Found [electronic resource] :")
Résumé
Résumé
In war-torn Sudan, a girl must make heart-rending choices as she fights for survival and a chance at a future.
"This short, quickly paced narrative will stay with readers for the rest of their lives." School Library Journali, STARRED REVIEW
"Moving and necessary." Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW
For Poni, life in her small village in southern Sudan is simple and complicated at the same time. Stay in school. Beat up any boy who tries to show attention. Watch out for the dangers in the river. But then the war comes. And when soldiers arrive in her village and bombs begin to rain from the sky, there is only one thing for Poni to do. Run.
Poni runs for her life, and alongside thousands of refugees, she must then make a long, dusty trek across the east African countryside. Driven by the sheer will to survive, Poni finds her way to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where she hopes to be reunited with her family. And if she is lucky, she will one day be able to convince the authorities that she is worthy to go to the land of opportunity. But the misery in Kakuma is almost overwhelming, and sooner than Poni could have imagined, she is on the run again.
With single-minded determination, Poni survives hell and back, but she cannot escape the war's devastating psychological effects or her survivor's guilt. In a heartbreaking final twist, Poni finds her mother just as she is about to leave for America--forcing her to make the hardest decision of all.
Key Text Features
map
historical note
timeline
glossary
references
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3
Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6
Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.
Critiques (4)
Critique de School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-This poignant and gripping story follows Poni, a young girl growing up in a Sudanese village. The emotional tale depicts the challenges of Poni's everyday life before the war. Against all odds, she must find a way to stay in school, deflect any young boy's attention, and fight for her life to survive malaria. But then the war comes, and everything changes. After her entire village is wiped out following an airstrike and her family is presumed dead, she must flee Sudan with a group of refugees to the safety of a refugee camp far away. Many die along the way, but Poni survives the long journey. Once she gets there, she discovers the horrors going on at the refugee camp and must escape. After she's free, a nun in Nairobi offers her shelter, the continuing education the teen has been longing for, and, ultimately, help getting to America, the land of opportunity. This book does an excellent job of evoking strong emotions from readers through its graphic depictions of life in war-torn Africa. Many are familiar with the Lost Boys of Sudan, but these authors set out to tell the stories of the Lost Girls of Sudan, and have succeeded with flying colors. This short, quickly paced narrative will stay with readers for the rest of their lives.-Candyce Pruitt-Goddard, Hartford Public Library, CT (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique de Horn Book
We often hear about the lost boys of Sudan, but what about the girls? Bassoff and DeLuca (an anthropologist) have created a representative character in Poni, a feisty young girl who loses everything when her southern Sudan village is bombed. After weeks of walking, she arrives at a Kenyan refugee camp, where conditions are brutal and where she is assigned a foster mother who values her mostly for the bride price she will fetch. Poni doesn't want to marry anyone, not even Lokure, the boy from her village who writes her love notes and who seems to be her kindred spirit. She just wants a chance to finish her education, and she has an opportunity to do so when she escapes the refugee camp and takes a bus to Nairobi where there is a school for girls. This fast-paced novel covers a lot of ground, geographically and temporally; by the time Poni is ready to head to America to settle permanently, she is about to enroll in college. While the authors provide a good deal of historical background, these details never bog down the story itself, mainly because Poni is such a fully realized and sympathetic character that she engages readers from start to finish. kathleen t. horning (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique de Kirkus
Much ink has been worthily spent calling attention to the harrowing experiences of the Lost Boys of Sudan. So what of the girls? Addressing a severe imbalance in the amount of attention paid to girls and women victimized in Sudan's long civil war, the co-authors (one of whom has worked in East Africa) offer a fictional memoir. It wrests a fictional Didinga child from her settled life amid family and close neighbors and sends her on a long, heartbreaking trek to a huge refugee camp in Kenya. Relating her tale in present tense in a distinct, spirited voice ("That is one thing about me. I don't get scared"), Poni goes on to describe her narrow escape from that camp and a forced marriage in the wake of a United Nations worker's failure to honor a promise of help. She recounts her later stay in a small women's shelter in Nairobi and, at last, the strenuous process of qualifying for a refugee program in far-off America. Though Poni learns to distance herself emotionally from the atrocities she witnesses, reminders of home force her to make agonizing choices along the way. Readers will come away with clear pictures of gender roles in Poni's culture as well as the South Sudan conflict's devastating physical and psychological effects. Two afterwords and a substantial bibliography (largely on the Lost Boys, perforce) will serve those who want to know more. Moving and necessary. (timeline, glossary, maps) (Fiction. 12-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique de Booklist
Zenitra Lujana Paul Poni's South Sudanese village of Chukudum is in the warpath of the Red Army boy soldiers. The only alternative to certain violent death is walking, or in Poni's case, running, to safety. Bassoff and DeLuca portray Poni as a strong-willed girl of the Didinga tribe, who loves to learn and has a vision of herself beyond her circumstances. The harsh environment and tragic events are focal in the telling of her travails on the road to the Kakuma refugee camp, where she is paired with a strict foster mother and, finally, with stern Sister Hannah in Nairobi. Groundwood Books plays a significant role in exposing American youth to global realities through many of its titles, such as those by Deborah Ellis, who draws from her work with women in Afghanistan and in refugee camps. With this offering, Bassoff and anthropologist DeLuca contribute a title that provides a welcome female perspective to the shelf of enlightening books chronicling the Lost Boys of Sudan.--Bush, Gail Copyright 2014 Booklist
