I Dream of Peace: Images of War by Children of Former Yugoslavia

by Children of Yugoslavia and James P. Grant

Book Overview

Drawings and writings by children in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia reflect their feelings about the war.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062511289
• ISBN13: 9780062511287
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: United Nations
• Length: 79 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 10.4" x 8.8"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Dreams of Peace Amid the Nightmares of War and Genocide

In 1991, the airwaves were ringing with President George H. W. Bush's call to arms to stop an act of war... in Kuwait. At the time, we heard hardly a word of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. Would the president only have had the opportunity to have heard the poignant voices in "I Dream of Peace." The title of this touching book comes from Aleksandar, a boy in Sarajevo, who was severely burned in an explosion. The saddest fact of twentieth-century warfare is the trend of taking the fighting from the battlefield to civilian areas, where children become the targets of the attrocities committed. A trend, yes; the adults who the children count on as our role models had evidently not learned the lesson from another famous testament of children's cries, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a collection of poetry and artwork by children at Terezin. The only thing that had changed in a half century is that "The Holocaust" became "Ethnic Cleansing." These pictures and poems are cries of pain; yet, like so much of the spontaneity of children's creativity, they ring with hope. This book is divided into four chapters. The first three, Cruel War, The Day They Killed My House, and My Nightmare show the war from the eyes of its most innocent and vulnerable victims. With brutal honesty, the children paint burning villages, planes dropping bombs, and soldiers and tanks shooting every which way. "You flee the misery, but misery follows," says Zana. Dunja wonders why, after living in a community that celebrated its diversity, "it's so important, everyone asking who you are, what you do, where you come from." In a scene that could have come from the pages of Anne Frank or Zlata Filipovic, she remarks, "The weather is growing very cold now. No longer can you hear the singing of the birds, only the sound of the children crying for a lost mother or father, a brother or a sister." Betraying here mere 12 years of age, Maida, from Skopje, remarks, "War is the saddest word that flows from my quivering lips.... It is a dealdy bird that destroys our home, and deprives us of our childhood. War is the evilest of birds, turning the streets, and the world into an inferno." The final chapter, "When I Close My Eyes I Dream of Peace," portrays the hope for peace. In stark contrast to the dark images of the first three chapters, these pictures are rendered in bright colors. Students from a fifth-grade class in Zenica mention Anne Frank's diary, which they read. "Like Anne Frank fifty years ago, we wait for peace. She didn't live to see it. Will we?" they ask. The book ends with a plea from Edina, a 12-year-old girl from Sarajevo, to all the children throughout the world, that they keep the children of Bosnia in their thoughts and hearts and to never allow what happened to them to happen again. Are the adults listening?

Images & Dreams of Peace

UNICEF volunteers offered displaced children in the former Yugoslavia workshops in art and writing. These children's voices are here, sharing their experiences with the world. A valuable classroom teaching aid. Third & Fourth graders especially seem to connect with their international counterparts. Colorful drawings, clear poems (trans. to English). I often use this book as an introduction to "write and draw your images of peace". Or, for those classrooms that are in a battle zone, this book would allow children to explore and to express their complicated reactions and visions. Also useful in lower grades as the drawings are very accessible. The vision is: out of war, peace is possible.

War self-evidently assaults early childhood development.

To read "Jim" Grant, former Executive Director ofUNICEF, is to read Cole P. Dodge--who survives Grant and remainssingularly dedicated to bettering the healthcare delivery systems to both women and children the world over.