CAMEL RIDER
By Prue Mason
Charlesbridge, 2007
Category: Middle grade fiction
Lately my boys have had a lot of questions about the war. The most troublesome for me has been this: “Why doesn’t it feel like we are at war?” I have mixed feelings when I tell them that nine-year-old boys living in Iraq today are probably experiencing a war more like the one my boys hold in their imaginations … armies, battles, scary times. It reassures them (and me) to know they are far away from the danger, but it inevitably reminds me how little I know about life in the Middle East. It was against the backdrop of these worries that we decided to read CAMEL RIDER; we were hoping for a glimpse at life in that part of the world.
CAMEL RIDER is the story of two boys: Adam lives with his family in an ex-pat community in Abudai, Walid is a slave, forced to race camels for abusive owners. The boys come from different cultures, speak different languages, practice different religions, and live completely disparate lives … but when war comes unexpectedly to Abudai, they are thrust together, alone and in the desert. Their only chance at survival is finding a way to work together.
The book did give the boys and me a better sense for the Middle East as a place, and we came away with at least an appreciation for the cultural differences between Arabs and westerners. Kudos to Prue Mason, and to Charlesbridge, for giving us a place to start.
One last note: the author uses both Adam’s and Walid’s points of view to tell the story, and the switches happen frequently, even within chapters. These point of view changes are marked in the text by font changes, but are harder to convey when reading the book out loud.