Grostephan, Alan, ed. Stories of Life & Death/Historias de Vida y Muerte by the Children of Cazuca, Colombia.

GROSTEPHAN, Alan, ed. Stories of life & death / Historias de vida y muerte by the children of Cazuca, Colombia. SangFroid Press (34 Water St., Excelsior, MN 55331). 96p. illus, c2004. 0-917939-01-8. $14.95. JSA 

Alan Grostephan of the Creative Change Foundation worked as a writing teacher with the children of Cazuca, a community of poor people displaced by Colombia's long-entrenched civil war. Collected here are brief stories, poems, and observations by the young writers, most between 9 and 13 years old, presented in both English and Spanish. Illustrated with uncredited but evocative b/w candid shots of both the young authors and their slum, this slice of reality and realizations goes far to bring American readers face to face with the conditions--physical and emotional--under which a significant portion of the world's population currently lives. Some of the young writers have a flair for literary style while others run on from phrase to phrase in a catalog of gruesome events; all ring with authenticity. A few footnotes explain the significance of the town's polluted lagoon, the status of drug dealers in the community, and folklore imagery. Written from the heart, and at ground level among the rotten fruit of political power struggles that include the international as well as the very local scene, this small book deserves a place in social studies classrooms and on free reading shelves as a window on the contemporary world. Francisca Goldsmith, Libn., Berkeley PL, Berkeley, CA