Peace Child 3

The next section of Peace Child that I read was very interesting. First, many of the different tribes in this region keep fighting one another and take other people captive/continue with head hunting. One day the members of one of these tribes sees a boat coming down a nearby river. They were amazed by this (they hadn't seen a big boat before) and saw that there were white people on the boat (which they had also not seen before). They were very scared and tried to come up with a plan of what to do. Eventually they begin to trade with these people for food and weapons that they had never seen before. Meanwhile, there is a  Christian missionary college in Canada, and a missions team is trying to figure out how to take a group of people down to this area to tell these tribes the Gospel. The book briefly goes into detail about the different missionaries that went down there, and I hope it will continue with their journey throughout the rest of the book. A text-to-text connection that I could make with this book would be to Through the Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot. Both books are about unreached tribes, where missionaries go to share the Gospel with the people there. I wonder if the books will have the same sort of ending, or if one will be different than the other.

Peace Child 2

In the next section of Peace Child that I have read, a lot changes in the plot of the book. First of all, the first character we are introduced to (from the Mauro tribe) is Yae. Over a years time, he visits a neighboring tribe known as the Haenam tribe about once each month. Previously, these two tribes and others haven't gotten along well at all, and are often at war. However, when Yae first meets up with Kauwan and other men from the Haenam tribe, they are very friendly to him and become his friends. If their two tribes would become "allies"  and would fight together against other tribes, they could become very powerful together. On one visit though, Yae is eating with his new "friends" and they suddenly attack him. He is killed and their reason for doing so is that they were going to kill him all along, but they were just delaying the attack. One Haenam man said, "We have been fattening you with friendship for the slaughter!" Another quote from the book is, "Kauwan turned away and said simply, 'You should have given me a peace child. Then I would have protected you.' At these words, a vision formed in Yae's mind, a pain-distorted yet tender vision of [his wife] sitting cross-legged by the fire, with the still unnamed baby lying asleep across her lap. The baby! Only that baby could have saved him! But now it was too late." This section of the book I read was about Yae being tricked into who he thought could be his friends. I think that the second quote I provided from my book might foreshadow to a future event in the book.

Peace Child

The book I have started reading is called Peace Child by Don Richardson. I am only one chapter into it, but by reading the summary and introduction, it looks like it will be a good book. It takes place in Irian Jaya Indonesia (formerly called Netherlands New Guinea), which is just north of Australia. This book is about different tribes of people who didn't get along, but eventually they will with the help of missionaries who went there. I chose to read this book because the author and missionary (Don Richardson) is friends with some people from my church. I am looking forward to reading this book, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

The Lions of Little Rock

The book I read this summer for my summer reading project is called The Lions of Little Rock. In this book, two friends: Marlee and Liz meet at the beginning of the school year. Marlee is a very shy girl, and Liz is very outspoken, so she tries to get Marlee to talk more and to open up to everyone around her.  One day, Marlee finds out that Liz was passing as white, and was actually black. This means that she wasn't supposed to be going to their "all-white school", and everyone said that Liz was different than they had thought. A quote from the book explains this: "' A colored girl and a white girl can't be friends,' said JT. 'Says who?' I asked. 'Says everyone!' exclaimed JT. 'That's why we go to different schools and churches, and...that's why the high schools are closed!' 'Then maybe,' I said quietly, 'everyone is wrong'" (Levine 190). Everyone told Marlee that her and Liz couldn't be friends any longer, but Marlee knew that she needed to stand up for integration and what she knew was right. Throughout the book, there are many examples of Marlee having to find her voice and stand up for what she believes in even though people turned against her and threatened her. The main theme of The Lions of Little Rock is standing up for what you believe in and to face your fears even when nobody else agrees with you. This is what Marlee had to do when standing up for Liz, and for integration in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The article I found is about the events that take place in The Lions of Little Rock. It talks about how Marlee must stand up for Liz and for integration of the public high schools. It talks about the hard times and difficult struggles that Marlee and Liz must overcome to stay friends, and to overpower the barrier of segregation that separates them.   See Article