A Long Way Gone Book Review

A Long Way Gone is thus far one of my most favorite books. This book is an autobiography on the author’s life as a child soldier. A Long Way Gone is full of so much action that makes you not want to ever stop reading. This book triggers every single emotion that you can think of and makes you happy, sad, excited, and surprised. I would recommend this book to teen aged readers because the content is a little heavy and may not be suitable for younger students. A Long Way Gone is definitely a book that everyone must read in some point in their life time. Ishmael lived in Sierra Leone during the time of the war. The rebels took everything from him his family, his childhood, and some of his friends. As Ishmael continues running away from the rebels, he runs into the army fighting against the rebels and joins the army with intentions of getting revenge for the loss of his family and friends. As Ishmael gets deeper into the war, he begins turning into a killing monster that has no mercy upon any of the rebels. Finally he is taken out of the war and rehabilitated and turned back into the troublesome kid that he was before the war had started. A long the way, he meets many people that made a big difference in his life. A quote from the book that shows how the war affected Ishmael is "My uncle and the rest of my new family were smiling and laughing at the stories of a deep voiced poet. I could not do either. I unfortunately reminded myself of the sight of the burning village and not to get exited for something that wasn't going to happen." The war got in the way of him being able to be happy. Even though he escaped the war, it still has control over him and made it so that any time there was a happy moment, all he could think about was him killing people. The war sincerely took Ishmael’s childhood away from him and he was forced to think like and become and adult while he was a soldier. The happiest part of the book is when Ishmael moves in with his uncle and he is able to live life as if the war never happened. He goes back to being a child and getting into the trouble that a normal child gets in. For example, him and his cousin sneak out of the house and go to a night party. He dances with a girl and they soon became boyfriend and girlfriend. Ishmael goes back to school and is looked at differently by the other kids because of the fact that he has been at war, but he doesn’t really allow that to bother him. The most important thing is that he has a family again and is able to live a normal life with a mom, dad, and siblings. Overall, I feel that this was a very good book and I’m not the only one who thinks that because my group feels the same way. I think that everyone should be required to read this book in schools so that they can see how fortunate they are to not have to go through things like that. I guarantee you that if you read this book, you will never want to put it down and your eyes would be glued to the pages.