KIDNAPPED FROM UKRAINE: UNDER ATTACK

KIDNAPPED FROM UKRAINE: UNDER ATTACK by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

The Popkova family knows that their city will soon be under attack by the Russians. What they didn't expect, was the family separation that would happen as a result of it. On the day the Russians finally arrive and launch their bombs, twelve-year-old twins, Rada and Dariia, are each with one of their parents. (Dariia is with Mom and Rada is with Dad.) Rada and Dad are able to escape out of the city to a safer location, but Dariia and Mom are not. Holed up in a basement with several neighbors from February 24 until April 18, they are finally discovered and after a series of events, captured by the Russians. Trucked to a processing center and forced to go through an interrogation, Dariia's mother is ruled unfit, as are all other parents at the processing center. All the children are taken from them and bussed to Russia where they attend a "camp" to begin the process of Russian indoctrination before being adopted out to Russian families to be raised. While not everything in this book can end in a positive way, the book does end in a hopeful manner. Be sure to read the Author's Notes at the end of the book. With maps, facts, and a declaration that "while the book is a work of fiction, the events and experiences are based on day-by-day testimony, interviews, and documented accounts," it is well worth the read. I'll end this part by saying that Skrypuch also states in her notes that Russia brags about the taking of 700,000 Ukrainian children. I had no idea.

HEADS UP- This is not an easy book to read which is why I bumped it up a bit on the age recommendation. (The book says 9-12.) It begins to invoke some of the same types of feelings that a person gets when reading about the Holocaust. While not horribly gory in its descriptions, people are dying and in awful ways. (An example would be a story one of the girls tells about how her mother died. After thinking they had escaped, her mother ends up being "blown to bits" by a bomb. The girl and her brother gather as many of their mother's parts up in a blanket to bury in their garden when a Russian truck arrives, grabs the blanket from them, and throws it on the top of the pile of corpses in the back.)

-When Dariia and her mother are brought to the processing center, they are forced to succumb to a strip search alongside everyone else. Males and females are present. The guards take advantage of this, enjoying searching the female adults, like Dariia's mother, extra well.

-Throughout the book, the guards constantly refer to Ukrainians as Nazis, pigs, or homosexuals.