Kiss the Dust

An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. No place is safe for Tara and her family. Twelve-year-old Tara Hawrami lives a normal life in Iraq—until the day she sees a boy, a Kurd like herself, get shot by soldiers in the street. But Tara still doesn’t realize just how dangerous life for the Kurds has become until the Iraqi secret police come for her father. Then her family must flee their home for the mountains of Kurdistan, but even there they are not safe. Iraqi bombs drive the Hawramis over the border into Iran, where they must live in a brutal refugee camp. Will they ever find a place they can truly call home again?   * “Laird weaves compelling facts about the conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds into her gripping tale about one family’s escape to freedom.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review   “An exciting, behind-the-headlines story.”—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books