Kiss the Dust

by Elizabeth Laird

Book Overview

Kiss the Dust by Elizabeth Laird is an unforgettable, award-winning novel of conflict, persecution and the hardships faced by refugees.Tara is an ordinary teenager. Although her country, Kurdistan, is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140368558
• ISBN13: 9780140368550
• Release Date: April 1994
• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.4" x 7.1"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

Worth sharing

I read this book to my students in a sole-charge school when the setting was still hot in the news, back in the early 90s. The story had us all gasping with identification as these blessed children in rural New Zealand imagined a life in turmoil. We still remember the pleasant life and then the flight over the mountains in the night.This books sits with Ann Holm's "I Am David", or Ian Seraillier's "The Silver Sword", as a novel that will help children understand the human suffering behind world politics and the nightly news. History is being made every day and World War Two is not the only history that gets a break in literature.Our discussions, our map work, our search for photographs of the region and the culture made this a rich reading experience indeed and I whole heartedly recommend it.

THE UNPREDICTABLE LIFE OF A YOUNG KURDISH GIRL

As a wealthy intellectual Kurd, I always find difficulties in telling my peers about the sufferings of my people. There are millions of Kurdish refugees "suffering" around the world and host countries should have some background idea about where they come from and why they left the comfort of their homeland. To me, this book came as a God's blessing so that to order tens of copies to every friend who ever asked me about my ethnic origin and why I am not serving my people.I am just finished with A Kurdish review on the book in the most widely circulated Kurdish newspaper. If you ever come across with a Kurd in your civilized world and feel bad about living on your tax payments, please read this book to realize that "Tara" and her examples were not beggars; they were just victims of this crazy world. The author should be congratulated for this outstanding work. She seems to know more of our culture than many of the true nationals. She must have lived between us for years to come up with this three dimentional insight into our culture, emotions and feelings. The book is very readable and of the right size. The cover is impeccable.

This book was awesome and exciting!!!!!

I thought that this book was really good we are reading the book in Language Arts and study its history

Review By Colette Behrent on the good book Kiss the Dust.

Kiss the Dust is an exciting story of a girl ,Tara, who's father is into problems with the secret police. The family must move around a lot and taa runs into different problems and scary situations.

Wow, what a great book!

I thought this was an extraordinary book! It was packed with adventure, and every moment made you want to read more! This book never slows down, and with a slight variation of the amount of excitment here and there, I would say this book was almost all excitement. The author explains each character so well, and each scene and feeling so emotionally, you realy begin to think of yourself in the same situation as the characters. The one thing I did not like about the book was the ending. For the end of a story, there should be a last sentence that wraps things up;this book just didn't have it. But other than that, I highly recommend this book!