Lit List: Escape From Mariupol A Survivor's True Story by Adoriana Marik As Told To Anna K. Howard; Humans Without Borders by Madhava Kumar Turumella, and Anna and Reggie Rapasaurus by William F. Harris and Stacey Roberts, Illustrated by Poormina Madhushani
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Escape From Mariupol: A Survivor's True Story by Adoriana Marik As Told To Anna K. Howard
Adoriana Marik is a tattoo artist and merchandiser who lived in Mariupol during the Russian-Ukrainian War. Escape From Mariupol recounts her personal experience living from the invasion, to her attempts at surviving in a violent world, and her eventual escape to the Czech Republic and the United States.
Marik’s book is a detailed, moving, suspenseful, and graphic account of the reality of living in a country torn apart by war. Her descriptions such as walking zombie-like and numb through a devastated almost apocalyptic city is a true moment of heartbreak.
These moments evocatively capture the angst of the average citizen when they are caught unaware in a situation that shatters the world around them.
There are also passages where Marik conveyed the desperation and sacrifice of surviving in a violent world and the resilience to help others in the same situation. For example,Marik took her dog, Yola, to every location and made sure wherever she went, her fur baby came with. Marik kept hold of her pet out of unconditional love and to care for someone during those dark days. Marik even cited Yola as a motivation for her to stay alive and keep going during the war.
Marik's survival instincts continued as she sought refuge in the Czech Republic and United States. She moved from place to place taking pleasure in the few little things that she could, a drink of fresh water, some biscuits, a friendly face, a warm bed, and of course Yola’s loyal presence.
Escape from Mariupol, reveals Marik as a complex woman of great strength, spirit, and courage to survive, leave a world torn apart by war, and then to recount her experience with her own words.
Humans Without Borders by Madhava Kumar Turumella
Madhava Kumar Turumella’s Humans Without Borders is an idealistic and hopeful plea for everyone to reach beyond borders and personal identification and to help others on a global, selfless, altruistic scale. To help other people because they are human beings and part of a wide global community instead of thinking of someone as being from another country, race, religion, sexuality, or identity.
Turumella reveals many of the mindset traps that people fall into like exploitation and cognitive dissonance when they categorize, place, and then use others for their own gain. They think of people as “the Other” and create tighter restrictions against them, deny them refuge, and treat them horribly once they arrive. When those mindsets are displayed, dehumanization inevitably follows and it becomes easier to threaten, attack, commit violence, isolate, and eventually kill someone else. Turumella illustrates how easy it is to fall into those mindsets, especially ignorance and cognitive dissonance based on our own limited personal experiences and assumptions. No one is immune from thinking this way but it is important to recognize and make active efforts to change that mindset, think about others, and reach out to help them.
While borders can never truly be erased and it is important to recognize one's home country, Turumella instead offers a way for Readers to minimize the importance of those borders and for governments to be more open and accepting in offering aid, resources, security, and sanctuary to other countries. The European and African Union are examples that while flawed (Turumella cites Brexit and the problems preceding it as one example), still feature countries making consistent and meaningful efforts of working together to create positive change not for one country, but for all of them.
There is one formatting issue that I must address. The chapters are numbered differently than they are in the Table of Contents. It can make for difficult reading especially if the Reader reads the book in E-book format and uses the links to lead them to the chapter. However, this flaw does not deter the book from its central themes.
Turumella insists that this book is not a call for revolution. It is not an altogether new or novel idea either. Instead it is a call for unity, understanding, empathy, and kindness. It is a reminder that while we may have our differences, we are all human.
Anna and Reggie Rapasaurus by William F Harris and Stacey Roberts, Illustrated by Poormina Madhushani
William F. Harris, Stacey Roberts, and Poormina Madhushani worked together to create a bright, vibrant, entertaining children's picture book about friendship and the importance of reading and learning.
Anna, a human girl, loves hanging out with her best friend, a dinosaur named Reggie Rapasaurus. One of their favorite things to do is going to the library and read books together. The book explores all of the imaginative adventures the two take as they read.
This is an engaging story that encourages a love of reading in its young Readers. The two imagine themselves in faraway places like the desert and explore and learn new things about the stars through the power of books.
Reading encourages bonding and communication and the book skillfully explores that through its own words. There is a rhythmic quality to the words almost like a rap number. Some of the pages like “You are a good reader like Anna and Reggie. Reading opens your eyes, so clap your hands, make a wish! Clap your hands, make a wish!” encourages participation and interaction.
The illustrations are bright and vibrant. They reflect Anna and Reggie’s daily routine at the library and the more fanciful trips through their imagination. Reading is exciting when people can imagine the worlds envisioned through the words on the page.Madhushani shows that transition between reality and imagination beautifully.
Through the engaging words and bright illustrations, Harris, Roberts, and Madhushani (as well as Anna and Reggie) reveal the book’s theme, “United we read, together we grow.”
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