Ground Zero by Alan Gratz. Unabridged e-audiobook ~7hours, 26 minutes. Narrated by Bernado DePaula and Ariana Delaware. Scholastic Audio, February, 2021. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from Hoopla.)
Teen Tuesday features another heart-pounding work of historical fiction by a TMS favorite. In Ground Zero by Alan Gratz, the POV switches between New York on September 11, 2001 and Afghanistan in 2019.
On 9/11, nine-year-old Brandon has to accompany his father to work because he has been suspended from school for fighting and it has been just the two of them ever since his mother died. Brandon's dad works at Windows on the World, a restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. Brandon feels he was justified to fight as he was defending a classmate who was being bullied. He leaves the restaurant to run to the underground mall and is in the elevator as a plane slams into the North Tower.
In present-day Afghanistan, eleven-year-old Reshmina dreams of continuing her education and worries that her twin brother might run away to join the Taliban. All she has known her entire life is war. She resents the presence of American troops in her country and blames the US for the death of her sister. Nevertheless, she opts to rescue a wounded American soldier when he asks for aide as Islam dictates. This act places her entire family in danger.
Though the pace is whiplash fast, Mr. Gratz paints a detailed and vivid picture of the terror and confusion in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Some sections are painful to read and there will be tears. Further information about both the terrorist attacks and U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan are provided in an author's note at the end.
