Week 11

For week 11, I chose to read Pride of Baghdad. It was an incredibly sad story, which I personally believed sent a strong message about how terrible the war in Iraq was. It also made a strong point as to how much suffering there was for both people and animals alike when Iraq was bombed by the American led-coalitions.
             This graphic novel has a powerful opening, in which the lions in the Baghdad zoo are communicating with one another on how to take matters into their own control. All the animals are angry and enraged at the keepers of the zoo. Their feelings and emotions really engaged me. It made me think about how even in 2018, a lot of animals are mistreated and held in misery in captivity.
            When the American planes bomb the zoo and other parts of Baghdad, the story got even more intense. It shows monkeys trying to hurt a lion cub, and the mother of the cub coming to save it from the monkeys that are bullying it. In addition, there is a confrontation with a bear, in which the male lion in the pride successfully defeats the bear, but the male lion and his pride are still suffering and going hungry. 
            I found the ending to be incredibly horrifying because the lions are shot to death at the hands of American soldiers, who are marching and patrolling the city of Baghdad.  

            There were also two technical reasons I loved this story. First, the illustrations were beautiful and second, the dialogue really seemed like things the animals would be saying to each other. Using the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq was a brilliant set-up for how animals could escape their imprisonment and then took off in the direction of a commentary about unintended consequences of war.

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