| 2013 Notable Book for a Global Society |
Coming of age during a time of war: fighting, dying, surviving. First-person accounts from around the world. Product Details| 10-digit ISBN | 1-935955-22-5 | | 13-digit ISBN | 978-1-935955-22-1 | | Format | Paperback | | Language | English | | Page Count | 300 | | Product Dimensions | 6 x 9 | | Rights | All Rights Available |
Seventeen writers contribute essays about how they became adults in times of war. Essays focus on modern history but take no sides. Vietnam from both sides. Bosnia. The Gulf War. Rwanda. Juárez. El Salvador. The list goes on and on. There are no winners, just the survivors left behind. Picking up the pieces.
René Colato Laínez talks about writing his essay for That Mad Game on the Paper Tigers Blog - Read here!
A Talib in Love by Qais Akbar Omar / AFGHANISTAN
No Longer Young by Phillip Cole Manor / VIETNAM
Holland 1944-45 by Elisabeth Breslav / THE NETHERLANDS
Across the River by Nikolina Kulidžan / BOSNIA
Hand-Me-Down War Stories by Jerry Mathes / U.S.
Left Behind in El Salvador by René Colato Laínez / EL SALVADOR
Ways of the Khmer Rouge by Peauladd Huy / CAMBODIA
My War and His War by Alia Yunis / LEBANON, PALESTINE, U.S.
Our America by Marnie Mueller / JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS, U.S.
Exiled to Gansu Province by Xiaomei Lucas as told to Becky Powers / CHINA
Brass Shells by Aria Minu-Sepehr / IRAN
Half a Continent, Step by Step by Andie Miller / RWANDA, DRC, SOUTH AFRICA
Statistical Life by David Yost / BURMA, THAILAND
The Light of Gandhi's Lamp by Hilary Kromberg Inglis / SOUTH AFRICA
From Fear to Hope: Raising Our Children in the World's Most Violent City by Fito Avitia / JUÁREZ, MEXICO
A Separate Escape: The Chin of Burma & the Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Program by Rebecca Henderson / BURMA, MALAYSIA, U.S.
Symphony No.1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945) by David Griffith / U.S., IRAQ, GERMANY
A Note from an Educator:
When writing their end of quarter reflections, the students in my freshmen Humanities class wrote of the impact That Mad Game had on their learning. Comments such as "the instructor's choice of That Mad Game was excellent, it opened my eyes and my heart to people and situations I had never thought of before," and "My sense of myself as a global citizen grew in leaps and bounds; I have a new awareness of how others suffer from injustice far beyond my own safety; it made me want to become more active in the world." I will continue to use That Mad Game as the central text for my freshmen students. It is a deeply humane way for young people to begin to grapple with the consequences of war.
Merna Ann Hecht
University of Washington, Tacoma
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Lecturer
| Kirkus Reviews |
| “Uplifting tales of survival… War’s most vulnerable victims have their say.” | | - June 20, 2012 | | full review >> |
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| School Library Journal |
| [R]readers will be rewarded by [this] compelling and often uplifting anthology … That Mad Game surprises with its variety. From Taliban-controlled Kabul to a Japanese internment camp in northern California, from a teen girl’s “soundtrack of war” in Beirut to a young man’s long walk across much of Africa, the startling stories make for rough going at times. But the humor, beauty, and humanity shining through the darkness are what make this collection a must-have for all libraries serving high school students. | | - Sam Bloom, September 15, 2012 | | full review >> |
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| Bookslut |
| "Truly a unique title. If we are lucky, we will never know what the contributors to Powers's collection have revealed. We will only have their record to better know what it was like; we will only have their sorrow to help us understand. Highly recommended." | | - Coleen Mondor, March 28, 2013 Visit Website | | full review >> |
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| The Pirate Tree |
| THAT MAD GAME is a collection of personal essays that can move glaciers. At least they will move the human heart to consider the suffering of those who experience the violence and terror of war … Each essay presents a unique perspective, and each one shares pain but also hope. Even humor. | | - Nancy Bo Flood, September 12, 2012 Visit Website |
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| Charles London, author of One Day The Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War |
| "There is heartache in the stories J.L. Powers has assembled here, as well as loss and pain and death. They are about war, after all. But there is humor too, and also love and faith and hope, because they are human stories too, and as each one testifies in its own way, humans are able to heal." |
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| Trent Reedy, author of Words in the Dust and Stealing Air |
| "I was sent to the war in Afghanistan with a lot of slogans in my head about freedom and fighting terrorism. What I found instead was a tremendous respect for the good Afghan people, a deep sympathy for the Afghan children struggling for better lives, and a profound hatred of the Taliban for the way they brutalized their own people. That Mad Game is a reminder that such hatred is the same mistake from which all the world’s wars are born. The fact that That Mad Game can steer my hard heart toward sympathy for a young Talib is a sure sign of this book’s tremendous potential to foster a spirit of peace and understanding in readers everywhere." |
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| Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books |
| These essays give readers a front-row seat to the hunger, the hardship, and, ultimately, the resilience of people whose childhoods were forever marked by life on the front lines. | | - January 1, 2013 |
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| Viewpoints |
| "In reading these documents of the inhumanities of war, we open our eyes to the ways brutality is perpetuated upon people and perhaps we become a little more compassionate from this understanding." | | - March 18, 2013 |
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| Click here to view all the reviews |
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