Caught in the Crossfire: Growing Up in a War Zone

Ousseimi, whose family left Lebanon at the beginning of that country's 17-year civil war, here considers children around the world who cannot escape war. To serve as a witness to children's suffering, she returns to Lebanon and travels also to El Salvador, Mozambique, Bosnia and the violent streets of Washington, D.C., a war zone ``of a different kind.'' For each region, she supplies background information and often harrowing personal accounts; ambiguities in her acknowledgments and an absence of source notes, however, obscure the boundaries between her own interviews and the research of others. The children she quotes have been victims of war and, sometimes, participants too, such as the brutalized wolf children of Mozambique. Strong and angry, her authorial voice decries the horrors of war, from the massacre of an entire village in El Salvador to the rape of women and young girls in Bosnia. Her outrage at the circumstances of war, unfortunately, sometimes exceeds her ability to drive home the depth of an individual's pain and loss. Stark black-and-white photographs introduce the speakers, who may be shown holding a gun or lying in a hospital bed, and otherwise document the settings. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)