A gripping story of a boy's escape from Communist Vietnam by boat, based on the author's own experience.

It's 1980, and 11-year-old Thọ Phạm lives with his family in South Vietnam. He spends his afternoons playing soccer and cricket fighting with his friends, but life is slowly changing under the Communists. His parents are worried, and Thọ knows the Communist army will soon knock on their door to make his brother, and then him, join them. Still, it shocks him when his father says that arrangements have been made for him to leave Vietnam by boat, immediately. Thọ tries to be brave as he sets out on a harrowing journey toward the unknown.

Co-authors Thọ Phạm and Sandra McTavish, childhood friends, have loosely based this historical fiction novel on Thọ's real-life experience as one of the Vietnamese Boat People, and includes many factual details from his journey on the South China Sea and in a Philippine refugee camp. Depictions of pirate attacks, hunger and loneliness make for a riveting survival story, sure to elicit empathy for refugees. Eventually adopted by a Canadian elementary school teacher, Thọ's story is ultimately one of hope, courage and resilience. (From Kids Can Press)

Thọ Phạm is a writer who lives in Ottawa. Pham left Vietnam alone at the age of 11 and after two months at sea landed at a refugee camp in the Philippines. He was later adopted by a Canadian elementary school teacher. The Cricket War is his first novel.

Sandra McTavish works in educational publishing and used to teach English in a high school. She divides her time between Toronto and a farm in Ontario. The Cricket War is her first novel.