Diamonds in the Shadow

I loved this Young Adult Fiction laced with suspense! The characters are fun to meet and provoke questions as the pages are turned. Jared, an eye-rolling high school aged teen, seems to be both embarrassed and impressed at the same time by his parents. Will he become responsible enough for driving

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lessons--ever? Mopsy, his sixth grade sister, with her boundless energy reminds me of a family member I know. Change her name and you could be reading about one of my granddaughters. Will she affect the changes she feels are necessary for Alake's assimilation into this new life? And what is wrong with Alake? Mattu's dignified manners and precise speech reveal a staunch young man who has lived through too much. What could be in the two boxes he carries from Africa to America? Why not revisit the past? Are the refugee parents as emotionally removed as they appear? Who is that fifth refugee, and what are his plans?

The grocery store scene impressed me. To hear someone gasp at the display of fruit and vegetables and then hear that person express a goal of working amongst all of this food, reminds me to be thankful for my undeserved heritage.

Written in first person narrative, at times the voice shifts as a different character shares his perspective. This could be a bit confusing if it is the first time a reader experiences this style of writing; however, it is top-notch writing. Overall, this is a very good adventure story for teens of either gender.

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Jared is not at all happy that his parents have volunteered their house-- and namely his bedroom-- to help out a family of African refugees fleeing a bloody civil war. Jared knows things were rough for the family getting out of Africa, but he despises the fact that he has to share his personal

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space with a total stranger. Life in America is a shock to the African family, but Jared soon realizes that not everything is as it seems. For instance, he becomes increasingly certain that the family of four barely knows one another-- and there are probably more reasons for them hiding than just a fear of lurking lions. Author Caroline B. Cooney has written a terse thriller that leaves the reader a trail of clues as to what's going to happen by the end of this short book. Like other Cooney books, there are some social issues and family drama involved in the story. We really only get to know Jared, his 6th grade sister Mopsy, and the two African children Mattu and Alake, and even they feel a bit flat at times. However, this is a good book to introduce students to a topic that doesn't get a tremendous amount of press (African civil war and its impact on human lives). I recommend Diamonds in the Shadow for students in perhaps 5th through 10th grades. It will appeal to boys and girls equally.

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Recommend for grades 8 and up. Realistic, but maintains a gentle touch. Could provide excellent discussion topics, dealing with change, characters are not always completely bad or completely good, the current plight of refugees, the challenges they must face when entering a new environment, how

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that affects those already living in the environment. Also, embedded is the concept of organized religion, neither praising it or condemning it. Would work for public and religious school discussions.

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If you are into the whole blood diamond thing this book would work. I liked the storyline. Reading this book may make people more aware of whats going on in Africa. By the title I figured it would be about blood diamonds, and it was. I liked this book although it may make people weary of

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immigrants. If they can kill and come to America, what if they came into your home. AHS/BB

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Jared is a typical American teenager who hates homework, his little sister, and sharing his possessions. When he learns that his family will play host to 4 African refugees, he is appalled by the prospect of surrendering half his room to a teenage boy he's never even met. As soon as the family

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arrives, Jared knows that sharing their lives will be even more difficult than his charitable, religious family imagines. Not only are the refugees perplexed by doorbells, juice cartons, and telephones, they also barely seem to be a family. Yet, even as Jared and his younger sister become suspicious of the refugees' story, they come to admire and even love the hard-working, long-suffering people sharing their home.

I appreciated several aspects of the novel. Until the very end, it avoids the type of soap opera drama that would have poisoned the reality of the narrative; instead, it quietly demonstrates that evils considered fantastic in America are realities in some parts of Africa. The book accomplishes this through dozens of tiny, human details, like a teenage refugee amazed that Americans can ignore a speeding police car -- "he could not imagine a world where people could afford not to know the location of armed men," the author writes in an early scene of the novel.

Details like this one allowed me to overlook the action-packed, schmaltzy climax, which suggests that the American Dream comes true instantly and magically true for everyone, complete with becoming a local hero, surviving a near-death experience, and getting a puppy all in one day. This over-the-top ending is the only place where the book would appeal only to the young adult audience for which it is intended; even as an adult reader, I sometimes put the book down between chapters to ponder its revelations about the nature of evil and the things Americans take for granted. Although I hope to find an adult novel that deals with this subject matter a bit more maturely, I would still recommend this even to other grown-up readers.

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Jared and his little sister Mopsy are American children whose parents decide to host a family of African refugees. Jared is less than thrilled at the idea of sharing all that he has with Mattu, the teenage boy who is so enthralled with school. The refugees find everything about America overwhelming

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and unfamiliar. Jared and his sister are a bit suspicious of the family, but admire their hard-working attitude.
Cooney's novel does a great job of illustrating some African issues; poverty, civil wars, and the life of a refugee, and making us think about some of the things we take for granted.
My only criticism was the ending which was too convenient and too perfect for belief.

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I had begun reading this book through the Chapter-a-Day program, and thought it seemed interesting, so I checked it out. It is an interesting combination of Christianity and the refugee situation. Jared and his family volunteer to host a refugee family from Africa whose apartment has fallen through

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right before they are scheduled to arrive. When the Amabo family shows up at the airport, they do not seem like they have been described, and more troubling, they don’t seem to relate to each other very well. When the truth about the family comes out, it is very terrible, but pretty simplistic too. There is a lot of killing and torture described, but it is mostly off-camera, so it isn’t gory. All of the main characters have very simple motives , and the American family is depicted as having not a lot of ambition. Jared, the main teenage character, does some research about the blood diamonds the family has smuggled in, but ultimately returns the diamond he has found without doing anything more about it. The book can be confusing because it is so simplified – for instance, the reality of the refugee camp is described, but there is no real explanation of why people would end up in these camps. However, I would hope that this book would cause teens to get involved in this cause, or to get their churches involved. There is an unnecessary side plot about a family in the church who has embezzled money from the church coffers – makes this story more dramatic, but it takes the focus off the refugees.

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Jared Finch's family has agreed to house a refugee family from Africa. The Amabo family is being sponsored by Jared's church, and they will need a place to stay and get acquainted with American culture and how things work. When Jared learns that the Amabo's son Mattu has never heard of the

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Holocaust, he is amazed and explains. Mattu replies, "We have those in Africa. I have been in one." Jared notices problems immediately and becomes suspicious that perhaps this "family" is not actually a family. The Amabos do not talk or touch, and seem to care little for one another. The only belongings they brought were two boxes of cremated remains, and when Jared and his sister get nosy, they discover uncut diamonds in the ashes. The diamonds are meant to pay for guns through another refugee from whom they have escaped -- but he is hunting for them and danger appears with him. Caroline Cooney has created a mystery based on current events, including the use of "blood diamonds" to pay for African civil wars (weapons, armies, violence), and child soldiers.

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It was interesting and overall good.

Diamonds in the Shadow was very different in the context of the writing. It was harder for me to rate and harder to classify than other books. It's good and I liked it a lot. It had just as much to say about the American characters as it did about the African characters and things going on in

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Africa. It was imaginative in that respect. The characters were developed in an interesting way in that they each seemed to point out something that the author wanted to say. They weren't caricatures but they were, without a doubt, examples. Some seemed real and some seemed a little overboard but not so much that I didn't hesitate for a while to say that. Perhaps a few of the characters seemed over simplified but then that's the way one sees people when one isn't inside their head. The characters through whose point of view we could see were more complex. Whatever it was it was interesting and I liked it. The story certainly did a good job of saying what I thought the author wanted to say and I decided it was definitely getting four stars. I also just added a couple more of Ms. Cooney's books.

Came back for another comment. I liked the ending too - not the dramatic ending, although I was very glad for that - but the ending that was underneath that. There was plenty of story underneath the story. Now that I think about it, that was my favorite part.

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good read for young adults.