This is very good and also unbearably sad.

“Tanks were normal. Bombs were normal. Why couldn’t food be normal? // They had salvaged what they could after the house was bombed. There was a bit of rice spilled on the ground. They picked it out of the dirt grain by grain. There wasn’t enough water to cook the rice, and no cook-pot, so the children had to chew the rice kernels raw.”

This is a children’s book, but I’d hesitate to recommend it to an actual child because it’s so, so bleak. Every chapter brings a new horror, made worse because the characters are kids themselves. I’ll finish the series because it feels irresponsible to look away and also because I hope it ends with hope.

“‘I don’t even feel like me any more,’ Parvana said, talking more to herself than to anyone else. “The part of me that’s me is gone. I’m just part of this line of people. There’s no me left. I’m nothing.”