Ground Zero by Alan Gratz

 This came into work as an ARC and I immediately grabbed it. Watch for it in February and make sure you read it and share it with middle grade readers in your life, and adults, and well everyone from middle grade up, no age max.

I read Refugee in 2018 and it was so well done that even though this is very hard topic for me personally (I am NYC girl born and raised) and for many people, for young people they don't know what it was like then. So I felt like if anyone can handle this with sensitivity and respect it was Gratz. And I was right. 

Ground Zero follows the pattern Gratz used in Refugee, following different points of view and different times and somehow connecting them. Here it is two stories, Brandon on the morning of September 11, 2001 in NYC and Reshmina in Afghanistan on September 11, 2019. 

The attack on the World Trade Center is seen through Brandon's eyes as he goes to work with his father in at Windows on the World in the North Tower. It is at times a little graphic but it is the story of survival and how people helped each other too. There is no way to tell it without being at least a little graphic which is why I suggest middle grade and up for readers. 

Reshmina lives in a village in Afghanistan where she has always known her home under cross attacks from Americans and the Taliban. She is interested in school and learning English and is acutely aware of the injustices and futility of the war that has for her anyway always been happening. 

She mets and helps an American soldier names Taz (Lowery) and it puts her entire family and village in danger but she does what is right. And in doing so she learns something and teaches something to Taz. It is important and moving. 

And as the story unfolds the connection slowly makes itself known. 

This was a very well done story and was really respectful and sensitive to the content while pushing the message that sometimes we don't know who our enemies are, we follow the lead of others without knowing why, and sometimes it takes a child to stop and think and ask questions to get others thinking too. 

Both Rashmina and Brandon are so very brave under extraordinary circumstances. And they have a lot to teach us. 

Read this when it comes out. Please and thank you. 

(Finished January 7, 2021)