Kiss the Dust - Softcover

Laird, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140368558 ISBN 13: 9780140368550

Publisher: Puffin Books, 1994

Synopsis

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. No place is safe for Tara and her family. Twelve-year-old Tara Hawrami lives a normal life in Iraq—until the day she sees a boy, a Kurd like herself, get shot by soldiers in the street. But Tara still doesn’t realize just how dangerous life for the Kurds has become until the Iraqi secret police come for her father. Then her family must flee their home for the mountains of Kurdistan, but even there they are not safe. Iraqi bombs drive the Hawramis over the border into Iran, where they must live in a brutal refugee camp. Will they ever find a place they can truly call home again?
 
* “Laird weaves compelling facts about the conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds into her gripping tale about one family’s escape to freedom.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
 
“An exciting, behind-the-headlines story.”—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

About this title

About the Author:

Elizabeth Laird is a writer of children's fiction and travel, and lives in England. She is also known for the large body of folktales which she collected from the regions of Ethiopia. Her books have been translated into at least fifteen languages Her works include: Red Sky in the Morning--Highly Commended for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Children's Book Award; Hiding Out – Winner of the Smarties Young Judges Award; Jake's Tower – Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Book Award; The Garbage King – Winner of the Scottish Arts Council Children's Book of the Year award and the Stockport Book award. It has also been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Blue Peter Award, the Salford Children's Book Award, the Calderdale Children's Book Award, the Lincolnshire Young People's Book Award, the Stockton Children's Book of the Year, the West Sussex Children's Book Award, the Portsmouth Book Award and the Sheffield Children's Book Award; and A Little Piece of Ground – Winner of the Hampshire Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Southern Schools Book Award.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Here, Laird, author of a poignant first novel about the effects of a hydrocephalic baby on his family (Loving Ben, 1989), portrays the journey of a Kurdish refugee family--a story based on the real experiences in the mid-80's of Iraqi Kurds now living in England. For Tara, 13, and her family, their ordeal is cruel and often life-threatening, yet they are among the lucky ones. Wealthy ``Baba'' (secretly a power in the Kurdish military) still has money even after repeated searches, while ``Daya'' manages to smuggle her jewels. Escaping the police as they leave their luxurious home in a city in northern Iraq, they take a taxi to their primitive vacation house in the mountains. For Tara, the return to village ways is almost as much of a shock as the bombs that eventually drive the family over the border into Iran, to a refugee camp infested with bedbugs and assaulted by deafening prayers rasped from a loudspeaker. Eventually, Baba makes contact with relatives in Teheran and passage to London is negotiated. Ever-present dangers maintain suspense--from a brutal street-killing Tara witnesses to her older brother's miraculous escape; meanwhile, Laird builds a sympathetic picture of the embattled Kurds and a compelling portrait of Tara and the sobering changes wrought in her and her family by the events, including her first startled response to a free society (``attractive and exciting...but frightening...as if things might suddenly get out of control''). An important contribution to the growing number of refugee stories. (Fiction. 10+) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0140368558
• ISBN 13: 9780140368550
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 288