Amity Middle School Orange Book Blog

Read reviews by an avid young adult book enthusiast.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Lost Girl Found by Leah Bassoff & Laura DeLuca

There has been a lot in the news about the 4,000 “Lost Boys of Sudan” who started coming to our country in 1999.  Little has been known about the Sudanese refugee girls.  This is largely due to the way girls are treated culturally in Sudan.  Boys in the refugee camps were placed in one area together-thus they were more visible when United Nations workers came to relocate them.  Girl refugees were fostered by families who would take them in so that they could profit by arranging their marriages.

Lost Girl Found is the fictional story of a Sudanese girl named Poni.  When soldiers begin killing villagers and when bombs hail down from the sky, everyone in Poni’s village runs for his/her life. As Poni is swept with others who are fleeing, she loses her mother and siblings.  

Days stretch into weeks before the survivors arrive at Kahuma. Kahuma was supposed to be their refuge.  Instead the camp is very overcrowded.  It is desert land. The dust is everywhere.  There is barely enough food to feed the masses.

Poni helps her foster mother erect a shelter with a piece of corrugated tin and a few chunks of wood.  This will hardly keep them safe.  Life will be constantly filled with dust and dirt.  All sense of time and passage of years are lost to Poni.  One day her foster mother tells her she has found a man in the camp who wants Poni for his wife.

Since this is the worst fate Poni can imagine, she strives to find a way out of the camp to a life where education and promise of a better future await. 


Imagine the obstacles she must overcome.  Read Lost Girl Found to understand her plight.


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