2007-07-04 Camel Rider - a great adventure!

Brilliant book! Read it from start to finish in one go. Beautifully written and totally absorbing. Set in the Middle East, the story describes how the lives of Adam, the son of an ex-pat family and Walid the slave runaway camel boy, are brought together as they are abandoned in the inhospitable desert wilderness. Survival and adventure are the gripping mainstays of this book. The kids will love it! As an adult reading this, not only was I captivated by the reminder of a child's strength and resolve, but I was drawn again to the underlying life truism that when anyone, be they child or adult, are faced with a shared need to survive in an environment of war, slavery or adversity of any kind, the human need for survival is huge and powerful. And in that shared need, cultural differences are simply that; differences. Differences to be learnt and respected and not something to be afraid of. Adam and Walid learn this through their struggles and triumphs and cement a friendship that simply cannot fail to move hearts.