Year of No Rain.

YEAR OF NO RAIN. Alice Mead. 2003. Read by Lisette Lecat. 3 tapes. 3.25 hrs. Recorded Books. #97603. 1-4025-6924-6. $29.00. Vinyl; plot, reader notes. J

From KLIATT's review of the hardcover in May, 2003: "Here we follow a crisis in the lives of young boys in southern Sudan. Their country is in a civil war, boys are in danger of being kidnapped to serve in the army, girls are sold into slavery if captured, and drought has ruined their crops. Mead is a vivid storyteller. Presumably she bas the facts correct about village life in the Sudan and the horrors of the civil war there. In a short period of time, YA readers are able to understand something of the struggle of these Sudanese boys. This is good supplementary material for current events ... in addition to being a good survival story."

This account of an 11-year-old Sudanese child's struggle to survive unimaginable odds is riveting. A humanitarian supply drop near Stephen Majok's village lures raiders who kill his mother, kidnap his sister, and burn the village. Before her death his mother insists that he and another village boy hide in the jungle before the predators come. If life was subsistence in the drought before this tragedy, Stephen now faces a day-to-day struggle for his life as he travels towards (he hopes) a refugee camp. Narrator Lecat provides a leisurely paced narration with a slight British inflection. The clarity and pace of this narration is excellent, especially for younger listeners. Nancy Chaplin, Libn., VCCW, Goochland, VA