Journey of dreams by Marge Pellegrino

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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

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