Year of No Rain

By Alice Mead

Book Overview

"An artfully told story . . . The history, the land, and the determination of a band of refugees to care for each other are vividly evoked in this important work." -- Starred review, Kirkus Reviews In the dry spring of 1999, eleven-year-old Stephen Majok watches as his friend Wol joins a circle of dancers. Wol is celebrating only fourteen, he is engaged to Stephen's sister. Wol wants to marry because he might join the guerrillas in southern Sudan and fight the northern government soldiers. He wants a wife to remember him. Stephen thinks Wol is crazy. Children should study. But because of the civil war, there has been no school in their village for over a year. All Stephen has left from his student days is his books and one precious pencil, and the hunger for knowledge. Then, suddenly but not unexpectedly exploding bombs are heard in the tiny village. Stephen's mother tells him to hurry, pack his bag, and hide beyond the forest with Wol and their friend Deng. Stephen grabs his geography book, his pencil, and little else. He does not want to leave his mother and sister. He does not want to leave the life he loves. In her latest portrayal of "children caught in the cultural crossfire" ( School Library Journal ), Alice Mead emphasizes the attachment all humans have to the small place on earth we call home, and our resistance to being displaced, even when our very lives are threatened.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374372888
• ISBN13: 9780374372880
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

Sudan's War Against the Dinka

This is a children's book about the war in Sudan. Three young boys are trying to escape the attack by their village by Jangaweed, the Sudanese soldiers who terrorize the South Sudanese villages on horseback. They have to escape to another country but refugee camps are full and they have to choose correctly which way to run. A nice book to help children who have Sudanese student in their classrooms understand why they come here better. Also, the Sudanese students have books which they can identify with and stories that touch their lives. A good addition to any school library collection.

Sudan's Civil War

Alice Mead's novel Year of No Rain is excellent. It is well written, with just the right amount of suspense to drive the story along, and its didactic elements are rarely obtrusive. Yet teach it does--about the realities of life in Southern Sudan, about the Sudanese civil war, and (to a lesser extent) about the inherent senselessness of war. It successfully avoids the oversimplified understandings of the Sudanese civil war that are all too common in America. And even if the Sudanese civil war may now be drawing to an end (or may not be--there have been false hopes for its end before), the novel remains valuable for its portrayal of a war that is in many ways little different from many of Africa's other civil wars. Stephen, a young Dinka, lives in a village with his mother and his elder sister, Naomi. His father has vanished, gone off to the war. Stephen's concerns are those of any older child in such a village: his family, the cows he tends and on which the village depends, and his sister's impending marriage. As Mead's examination of daily life in Stephen's village continues through the first quarter of her novel, the echoes of the distant war build, until suddenly the village is raided by soldiers looking for food. Stephen and two other boys escape to the forest; his sister Naomi hides. The next day, Stephen and the other boys return to find the village destroyed, Stephen's mother dead, and Naomi vanished. The remainder of the book tells the story of the boys' wanderings through forest, grassland, and swamp, at first heading for a refugee camp over the Ethiopian border, then returning home. Just enough happens to keep the plot going nicely without the book ever becoming tedious or monotonous. This is a real achievement of Mead's, since the boys' desperate journey is one of tedium, monotony, and incipient despair. Finally, the boys return home to their village, where they find Naomi, who has escaped her captors and has also returned to the one place she can call home. The book ends on a hopeful but realistic note as the children start to try to re-establish life among the ruins. Mead is to be congratulated not only on an excellent and atmospheric story, but also on the subtlety of her portrayal of Sudan's political and ethnic situation. She does not fall into the trap of seeing a simple struggle between Christian South and Muslim North, often told as a simple parable of good and evil. Mead's Northerners are shadowy and threatening, but her Southern soldiers are also threatening, though less shadowy. At first it is assumed that Stephen's village was raided by Northern troops; later, in a neat and very realistic twist, it turns out that the raiders were probably Southern rebels. The boys have to hide from Southern soldiers in a truck as well as from Northern soldiers in an airplane. The conflicts between different Southern tribes are as much a threat to the boys as thirst and disease. One Shilluk woman the boys meet is kind to the Dinka wanderers,

Sudan's Civil War

Alice Mead's novel Year of No Rain is excellent. It is well written, with just the right amount of suspense to drive the story along, and its didactic elements are rarely obtrusive. Yet teach it does--about the realities of life in Southern Sudan, about the Sudanese civil war, and (to a lesser extent) about the inherent senselessness of war. It successfully avoids the oversimplified understandings of the Sudanese civil war that are all too common in America. And even if the Sudanese civil war may now be drawing to an end (or may not be--there have been false hopes for its end before), the novel remains valuable for its portrayal of a war that is in many ways little different from many of Africa's other civil wars. Stephen, a young Dinka, lives in a village with his mother and his elder sister, Naomi. His father has vanished, gone off to the war. Stephen's concerns are those of any older child in such a village: his family, the cows he tends and on which the village depends, and his sister's impending marriage. As Mead's examination of daily life in Stephen's village continues through the first quarter of her novel, the echoes of the distant war build, until suddenly the village is raided by soldiers looking for food. Stephen and two other boys escape to the forest; his sister Naomi hides. The next day, Stephen and the other boys return to find the village destroyed, Stephen's mother dead, and Naomi vanished. The remainder of the book tells the story of the boys' wanderings through forest, grassland, and swamp, at first heading for a refugee camp over the Ethiopian border, then returning home. Just enough happens to keep the plot going nicely without the book ever becoming tedious or monotonous. This is a real achievement of Mead's, since the boys' desperate journey is one of tedium, monotony, and incipient despair. Finally, the boys return home to their village, where they find Naomi, who has escaped her captors and has also returned to the one place she can call home. The book ends on a hopeful but realistic note as the children start to try to re-establish life among the ruins. Mead is to be congratulated not only on an excellent and atmospheric story, but also on the subtlety of her portrayal of Sudan's political and ethnic situation. She does not fall into the trap of seeing a simple struggle between Christian South and Muslim North, often told as a simple parable of good and evil. Mead's Northerners are shadowy and threatening, but her Southern soldiers are also threatening, though less shadowy. At first it is assumed that Stephen's village was raided by Northern troops; later, in a neat and very realistic twist, it turns out that the raiders were probably Southern rebels. The boys have to hide from Southern soldiers in a truck as well as from Northern soldiers in an airplane. The conflicts between different Southern tribes are as much a threat to the boys as thirst and disease. One Shilluk woman the boys meet is kind to the Dinka wanderers,