A Little Piece of Ground

Elizabeth Laird's A Little Piece of Ground is a story for 11 year olds about a boy who just wants somewhere to play football.

What happens

Karim Aboudi is twelve and lives in Ramallah, on the West Bank. When the book opens he's been stuck indoors for two weeks. After a Palestinian gunman shot two people in an Israeli café, soldiers put the whole city under curfew. There's a tank at the crossroads below his flat. If anyone steps outside, the soldiers will shoot.

So Karim writes lists. The ten things he wants to be, starting with champion footballer of the entire world. The ten things he doesn't want to be. Number ten on that one is "Not dead".

That list tells you a lot about this book. Karim is funny and cheeky and very twelve. He fights with his big brother Jamal, gets to Level Five on a computer game (or Level Four, if you believe Jamal) and moans about his little sisters. And all the time the news is on in the next room.

When the curfew lifts for two hours, the whole family bursts out of the door. Karim goes looking for space to kick a ball. He meets Hopper, a thin, grinning boy from near the refugee camp. Together they clear the stones from a patch of waste ground beside a mountain of rubble and make it their own.

Reading it, you're right inside Karim's head. You feel the stuffy flat, the itch in his legs and how brilliant fresh air is after days indoors. His family are very real too. His dad goes quiet and then explodes about the shop, and his mum's sharp tongue hides how frightened she is.

This is a serious book, and you'll want to know what's in it. The news reports deaths on both sides, including children. Karim thinks about being shot. His brother throws stones at tanks. The story is told from inside one Palestinian family, and their anger at the soldiers is on almost every page. Some readers will need to talk it through (and maybe ask a lot of questions).

For a reader who's ready, it's a warm, funny, eye-opening way into a place they've probably only seen on the news. It's about friendship and football as much as fear.

What to read next

If they'd like another of Elizabeth Laird's children growing up in a divided city, try Oranges in No Man's Land. Ayesha lives in Beirut during the civil war, and her story opens with a loss, so it's one to start together.