First Impressions

Before I read the book, I expected the story to go straight to violent war drama. As I was readin the introduction, it gave me the mood of a boy who has been through a series of violent activity throughout his childhood. Even looking at the cover of the book gave me the impression of a violent society with hostaged kids to be forced to be child soldiers. Seeing a boy holding a RPG missle, with an ak-47 on his back by himself showed me that the life of a child soldier is a lonely road. With no family and no one who loves you and to take care of you, your on a pathway through great warfare not only in war with other government soldiers, but war with the the soldiers in your own organization. It seems as if the children don't want to be in this situation, but is forced to. I felt sympathy as I was reading through this book. Reading about how a child wants to have a future with his friends but has to deal with the fact that rebel soldiers are invading villiages and could get closer to where this boy was. Dealing with the stress that knowing his home village got invaded would be tremendous. Think about if your hometown got invaded by an opposing force. What would you do? Would you go back and risk your life to find your family like the people in the book? Or would you go and save yourself and think that your whole family is gone? Not only reading the first chapter of the book that makes me ask these questions to myself, but looking at the graphic pictures makes me think about how life would be like in these developing countries. These are my first impressions.

-Ryan Le