Arn does what he must to survive-and, wherever possible, to protect a small pocket of children and adults around him. Arn doesn't understand what the Khmer Rouge stands for he only knows that over the next several years he and the other children shrink away on a handful of rice a day, while the corpses of adults pile ever higher in the mango grove. McCormick's version begins when the Khmer Rouge marches into 11-year-old Arn's Cambodian neighborhood and forces everyone into the country. McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond's youth for older readers. The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara's picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). His settings are also dead-on, so to speak: In one iconic, symbolic scene, the Statue of Liberty’s arm is replaced with another, and readers can’t help but wonder if this is the future.Įverything culminates in an action-packed, heart-wrenching conclusion guaranteed to chill readers to the bone.Ī harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields. Shusterman’s finale might be the best one in the series since the first: He cuts straight to the chase with the plotting and creates horrifically heinous supervillians to keep it moving and ensure readers are glued to the edges of their seats.

Meanwhile, a gang of evil, elite black-market organ harvesters pursues Connor with deadly intent. Also, Connor and his team find an “organ printer” that could be the answer they need to stop the unwinding atrocities around the globe, and egomaniacal Mason Starkey continues to attack harvest camps across the country with bloodthirsty vengeance. Chilling propaganda pushes the Marcella Initiative, a law that would allow the government to unwind teenagers without their parents’ permission. Times have changed for Connor, Risa, Lev and company-the heroes and heroines of a brave fight to prevent the government from harvesting the organs of unruly teens. The grisly conclusion to the Unwind Dystology.

Undivided neal shusterman