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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
Nonfiction · age 14+ · 1080L (~7th–8th grade) · 320 pages · 2007
Why we'd hand it over
Essential testimony, not assigned reading — the prose is honest and unflinching; a 14-year-old ready for adult truths will be changed by it, but this is a conversation-with-a-parent book, not a solo read.