Media - book (child soldiers)

“Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict.” Amazon.com 30 Aug 2008. <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0198259328/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books>

The type of mass media I used is book, and the topic is about child soldiers. The characteristic about book is that it can persuade or convince the readers by interesting and realistic story form. The first novel I found is Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict written by Ilene Cohn. In her writing, she tried to show the failure of international humanitarian law and the internal conflicts in the most common battlefields. She mainly looks at the consequences for child soldiers and their families. After she finished writing, she also made some suggestions for preventing recruitment, and requesting for a more logical policy of treatment for child soldiers who have participated in the war. The story is based on her study for several years, and through study written, it gives a rich of information about child soldiers. The novel also includes many pictures of child soldiers, which makes the story more realistic and convincing. The story is focused on searching for realistic responses and solutions to their problems. Therefore, her purpose of the writing is to stop the child soldier system in the world and to tell people to recognize the issue and find some solutions. By looking at the author’s purpose of writing, the readers can tell she is biased against child soldiers. She delivers the facts about child soldiers, and also tries to convince the readers that it’s wrong and people should pay more attention in finding solutions to the issue. Therefore, in the novel, she not only disagrees with child soldiers, but also actively suggests solutions and laws that can protect the children’s rights. The detail descriptions of child soldiers and their stories take me into her writing, and make me feel like I am part of the child soldiers. The novel fully describes the situation in Africa, and it strongly persuades me that there should be no child soldier in any part of the world. In addition, I think coherent laws for this issue are urgently needed.
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“Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection.” Amazon.com 30 Aug 2008. <http://www.amazon.com/Child-Soldiers-Protection-Michael-Wessells/dp/0674023595/ref=pd_sim_b_3>

The second novel I chose is Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection written by Michael Wessells. This book is based on researches and interviews with hundreds of formal child soldiers in the world, which includes stories about ex-soldier’s experiences and situations. These interviews and the facts that the author researched provide truthful evidence of the issue and make the story more realistic and interesting. Those child soldiers were kidnapped by the promise of food, protection, or a better life. However, unlike what they have told, they were actually used as a child soldiers, spies, porters, and sexual slaves. Also, the author says the most of girls are in dangers from pregnancy and childbirth complications. The author, Michael Wessells, put the children’s situations and feelings into words. He is an experienced child protection practitioner with Christian Children's Fund. In the novel, he argues about social and moral wounds of war, and a surprising number of child soldiers’ lives. He also leads readers to recognize the problems and develop global solutions to stop this issue. Because of his strong arguments about child soldiers, it shows the author is biased against the issue. By choosing book as a source to write his opinions is very effective way to do it because a book is very efficient in describing the issue with details. Unlike other media such as newspaper, book has more freedom in writing author’s own opinions and voice into the story. Therefore, he describes the horror situations from the children’s point of views, which is his purpose of writing, and he also offers hope to them by providing example of children re-entering their societies as students, citizens, and peacemakers. In addition, something special about this book is that it gives practical guidance to end the children victims in the wars. By reading the summary of this book, it makes me to recognize the problems in child soldiers and how its matter must be settled immediately. Last year, I used to work on this issue in Amnesty International, and now I feel like I have to be more active in finding solutions for them and make the issue to be worldwide known.