Author: Keely Hutton
Genre: Historical/Biographical Fiction
Age Category: Teen
Summary: Soldier Boy begins with the story of Ricky Richard Anywar, abducted at age fourteen in 1989 to fight with Joseph Kony's rebel army in Uganda's decades-long civil war. Ricky is trained, armed, and forced to fight government soldiers alongside his brutal kidnappers, but never stops dreaming of escape.
The story continues twenty years later, with a fictionalized character named Samuel, representative of the thousands of child soldiers Ricky eventually helped rehabilitate as founder of the internationally acclaimed charity Friends of Orphans.
Working closely with Ricky himself, debut author Keely Hutton has written an eye-opening book about a boy's unbreakable spirit and indomitable courage. Beginning in Africa amidst the horrors of civil war, his is a story that is as uplifting as it is heartwrenching.
•MY REVIEW•
Category 1
Word choice, punctuation, grammar, spelling, and sentence and paragraph structure
Word choice is great. It really helped the reader picture the characters and their actions.
5/5
Category 2
Plot, setting, background/stories, and characters
Soldier Boy is a biography of Ricky's experience of being a child soldier in Uganda during 1989 to 1992. You can't change or critique the plot, setting, background, and characters. If this wasn't a true story, I wouldn't change anything anyway.
I like how it brought Samuel into the story in the year 2006. The man whom he talked to at Friends of Orphans was one of the main characters during 1989.
5/5
Category 3
Writing style and pace on the story
Soldier Boy covers two years of Ricky being in the LRA. It just didn't seem like the author described that time difference very well.
4/5
Category 4
Details and descriptions
Every place that Ricky went to is described perfectly. I could picture everything in detail.
When Samuel was at Friends of Orphans, the people he saw were given detailed descriptions.
5/5
Category 5
Originality (overall creativity)
I actually didn't know Soldier Boy was a true story until the end. It was interesting hearing Ricky's story and the terrible things he experienced at such a young age.
I love how the book was set up. The chapters switching between Ricky and Samuel.
5/5
TOTAL: 24/25