Thursday, July 9, 2009

Elephant Run


It was 1941 and every night the Germans were bombing London. It became routine for 14-year-old Nick Freestone to wake up to the air raid sirens and go to the subway tunnels until the all clear siren was sounded. Routine, that is, until a bomb destroyed his apartment. Then his mother decided it was time for him to go live with his father on his teak plantation in the jungles of Burma (present day Myanmar) where it was safe. Of course, there were the poisonous snakes, leeches, tigers, leopards, swarms of biting insects, wild elephants and more dangerous animals and diseases. It turns out they were the least of Nick's problems because the Japanese were invading all of Southeast Asia. Within his first few days in Burma, an enraged elephant cracked his ribs, the Japanese took over the plantation, his father was made a prisoner in a labor camp, and Nick was forced to become a house servant to the Japanese Colonel who had set up camp in their plantation home. With the help of his new friend, Mya, and her great-grandfather, a very old and highly respected monk and mahout (elephant handler), Nick makes plans to escape to Australia. However, Nick does not intend to leave Burma without his father or Mya's brother, Indaw. His determination, a Freestone family trait, will put everyone is danger before it is over. The danger and suspense in this 2010 Rebecca Caudill nominee starts at the very beginning of this book and continues until the very end.

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