Escape from Aleppo

Nadia hasn't left her apartment since she was injured by shrapnel in a bombing last year.  She barricades herself under the bed with her cat, Mishmash, at night.  But now she has no choice.  Now the fighting is coming to her building, and she has to leave now. 

The rest of the family runs ahead, but Nadia hesitates.  Then the bomb hits.  When she wakes up, she is hidden by rubble but protected from injury by a nearby car.  Her family is gone.  They left her.

But maybe it's not too late.  She knows the way to the dentist's office that was to be the meeting point, so she sets off across a city at war alone.  With only Mishmash for company and a desperate hope her family will be waiting. 

Along the way, she meets an old man and his donkey.  She isn't sure if she should trust Ammo Mazen, but he offers her help and seems to know how to avoid angry soldiers. 

Soon she realizes her only hope of seeing her family is to escape the city entirely and flee to Turkey.  Ammo Mazen agrees to take her, and she is happy to have a friend, but frustrated with the slow pace.  The old man is sick and getting worse.  All Nadia can do is try to be patient as she remembers Aleppo before the violence and takes in the destruction around her. 

N.H. Senzai's novel successfully brings the complicated situation in Syria to something more easily understood by its middle grade audience.  Readers will feel Nadia's pain, feel, and frustration as she faces the dangers of her devastated city.  Highly recommended.