A book and an article

Here's a book for kids aged 9 to 12 with a major thread about Afghanistan. Andrew Clements is a wonderful writer -- I've read almost all his books, even though I'm considerably older than his official target audience. I've requested this one from the library and can't wait.

In other news about Afghanistan, I found this article when reading on-line news reports from my college, Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. It's about an extraordinary family of siblings from Afghanistan and how all of the kids are pursuing their educations with the goal of going back and rebulding their country (one of them is at Bates). These are remarkable kids, and there's a little bit of insight into what life has been like over the past 20years.