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The War in El Salvador ~ by René Colato Laínez

 When I was a child in El Salvador, I went to school, recited poetry, played with my friends and won a hula-hoop contest on national television. I might say that I had a normal childhood. But then, everything was upside down. For many days the school closed because of civil revolts. The radio and the television always talked about the army, guerrillas and the revolution in the country. The mad game came to El Salvador. The country was involved in a terrible civil war.

As I child, I did not really understand what was really going on. I asked myself many times, Why? Why were they doing this to the country? Before the war, when I heard a “boom”,  I clapped and jumped up a down. It was the sound of the fireworks for Christmas. A “boom” meant that Christmas was around the corner. But during the war, when I heard the first “boom”, I ran home and hid under my bed, while more “booms” went on and on. Because those “booms” were not the sounds of happiness, they were the sounds of war.

During the war, thousands of Salvadorans left the country looking for peace and better opportunities. Many of these Salvadorans traveled to the United States. My mom was the first one in the family who left the country. After many struggles, my father and I left El Salvador in 1985.

I arrived in Los Angeles, California and I had the determination to go to school to become a teacher. Now I am a kindergarten teacher at Fernangeles Elementary School. I am also the author of many children’s books.

In December 2010, Cinco Puntos Press contacted me to participate in a book. They were putting together an anthology about children and war and were wondering if I could consider submitting an essay for the anthology. Of course I said yes! I love Cinco Puntos Press books. I use their bilingual books in my classroom all the time. Participating in this anthology was an honor for me.

The name of the book is That Mad Game; Growing Up in a Warzone: An Anthology of Essays from Around the Globe. The editor of the anthology is J. L. Powers.

Now was the hard part. What to write about? I grew up during the war and I had so many memories. My fourth grade teacher was killed during the war. That morning, the school was closed. Instead of having class, all the students went to a funeral home that was located one block away from school. I also knew friends who were recruited and found dead days later in rubbish dumps.

But I wanted to write all the way from the bottom of my heart. I wanted to write about my family and how the war divided us. But it was hard! Remembering my mom saying good-bye at the airport, visiting my father in jail, listening to the terrible news that archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated and the final chaos at the cathedral during his funeral were all hard memories to put on paper. I must confess that I wrote my essay with tears in my eyes. Also it was a good therapy to write the essay. Yes, the war divided us but it could not destroy our love, faith and family bond.

The name of my ess

An Accidental Adventure #2: We Dine With Cannibals by C. Alexander London

Review by Chris Singer

About the author (from his website):

C. Alexander London is an award-winning author of nonfiction for grown-ups (under a slightly different not very secret name) and, as his official biography says, he really is an accomplished skeet-shooter, having once won a 12-gauge tournament because no one else had signed up in his age group. He’s also a Master SCUBA diver, and, most excitingly (to him) a fully licensed and accredited librarian. He used to know the Dewey Decimal System from memory. He doesn’t anymore. While traveling as a journalist, he did indeed watch television in 23 countries (Burmese soap operas were the most confusing; Cuban news reports were the most dull). He survived an erupting volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a hurricane on small island in the Caribbean, 4 civil wars (one of them was over by the time he got there, thankfully), and a mysterious bite on his little toe in the jungles of Thailand. The bite got infected and swollen and gross and gave him a deep mistrust of lizards. Although he has had many adventures, he really does prefer curling up on the couch and watching some good reality television or reading a book. Like Oliver and Celia Navel, he enjoys danger and intrigue far more when it’s happening to somebody else.

About the book (from his website):

In their second unwanted adventure, We Dine with Cannibals, Oliver and Celia will travel from the ruins of ancient temples to the shadowy forests of the Amazon. They’ll need all their reality TV survival skills when they ride a llama, race the rapids, and even fly an airplane! If that’s not enough excitement for you (it is decidedly too much excitement for Oliver and Celia Navel), they’ll be forced to learn the proper etiquette for a cannibal feast and confront the strangest and most brutal rite of passage ever devised by human imagination: Dodgeball.

My take on the book:

The second installment in London’s An Accidental Adventure series has readers following the Navel twins on another reluctant adventure. This time they travel to the Amazon Rain Forest where they must use all of their reality-television survival skills to avoid becoming the guests of honor at a cannibal feast!

We Dine With Cannibals is a tremendously fun and action-packed reading adventure which is sure to leave readers wanting more. The story is filled with twists and turns to keep readers guessing at what is going to happen next. I love how London uses information (real facts sprinkled with some myths and legends) about the Amazon Rain Forest to set the landscape for Oliver and Celia’s adventure. This not only sparks interest in the story itself, but is practically guaranteed to send young readers to the internet in search of more information about the Amazon.

I have no reservations about recommending this and the first book in the series, We Are Not Eaten By Yaks, to parents, teachers and librarians.

Be sure to check out Book Dads later this week as I will be posting an exclusive interview with C. Alexander London.