If you are a parent or educator of young people over age 15, please consider this book to which a friend of mine contributed…
…There have 14,000 wars in the last 5,600 years, and at least 160 since 1945. Children are far more likely to experience war at some point during their childhood than they are to grow up without it.” J.L. Powers, That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone
I was rather reluctant when I got an email from J.L. Powers asking me if I would be interested in contributing an essay to an anthology she was editing about children growing up in warzones. I am uncomfortable talking about Lebanon because it feels rather narcissistic given how many children suffered far more in Lebanon back then and since those days. So we agreed we could make it about Lebanon a little but more about a boy from Gaza named Mutassem, a ten-year old amputee who had came to Los Angeles for medical treatment through the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a…
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myfanwy collins 
Myfanwy,
Thank you for posting this – With so many children having to survive let alone live in “war zones” around the globe right now this book could not have been written and published at a better time. I want to read this book and I’m going to share it with my sophomore in high school daughter. With so much violence, gorilla warfare, heads of countries striking at their own people, and people with different beliefs seemingly battering each other with blood lust, the children get lost in the horrors and are easily forgotten when those who choose the news to share choose what is “sexier” and most bankable. I think that many U.S. citizens forget about the realities of the average family in war torn and ravaged countries, and especially about the hell and destruction witnessed by children on a daily basis. They will be scarred emotionally, psychologically, and some, physically forever. How do they go on and meet every new day? We are a nation that often seems to forget or in my opinion, rarely think about that which is not happening in the good old U S of A. I hope that many people read “The Mad Game.” We need too. It’s so sad but fitting to see that the cover of this book has jagged black barbed wire and a red kite on it’s cover. For me, the barbed wire symbolizes that the children are trapped and have no way to escape and even when they are playing there is blood all around them. Again, thank you for finding this, being a part of it, and for making the time to stop and ask everyone to think about the most innocent in these tragedies, the children. The children.