Little Princes (2011)

jeez. i thought i had this on the tbr already.

i met grennan last year and the dude is about as genuine, kind and hilarious as they come. we had a great conversation about not-for-profit foundation work (i have a foundation i run with two friends doing education scholarships for girls in togo and zambia), so hearing about his experiences, while amazing, were also very relevant to the work we are doing.

Another book that I'm torn about how to review. The first half gets a solid 4 stars. The second half...maybe two. I forced myself to finish it (because in my quest to read 52 books this year, I didn't want to have wasted valuable reading time on a book I couldn't "count"!).

I truly enjoyed the first half. I've finally learned that books about other places can be pretty interesting. I liked learning more about the war and unrest in Nepal and specifically the child traffiking. Somehow, in the second half, though, the book became much less about the children and more about the author and his personal quest. I do "get", on some level, that this is as it should be; the book, after all, is about the author's experience. But based upon the title of the book itself, I expected (and would have preferred) it to be more about "the lost children of Nepal." ( )

I fell for the hype. The feature in the New Releases newsletter, the huge author profile and video on the book page, the pretty cover, the really great subject and the attractive author. I paid out for the hardback but you needn't, it will be remaindered within the year.

Its just flat. Really its a 'me' book, no, 'ME' book. The author just writes about himself and sketches in the people he deals with, but its all about him and to a lesser extent the kids, and to an even lesser extent his cornfed blonde internet pen-pal who becomes his wife, then about the other expats. Others, the Nepalese included, are merely mentioned. All very lacklustre.

What I wanted to know was how the homes were run, who did the cooking, the cleaning, the looking after the children when the author wasn't there. Who taught them, what did they learn? What prospects did they have when the eldest would have to leave and at what age was that envisaged? And what happened to the girls - were they all safe at home being looked after by their parents or what? When I say who did this and that, I mean the locals, I didn't need to just hear about the ex-pats. I'm interested in the Nepalese story too. Actually, we finally hear that there was a house father and house mother (local Nepalese) a couple of pages from the end. They just weren't important to his story but they were what I wanted to read about.

I got a bit more interested in the trek to Humla to find the lost boys' families, but that died when he returned and started to write adolescent stuff about buying a Bible (his girl friend is a born-again) and being in love with her but not wanting to tell her, oh gee, spare me.

Partly it's the editor's fault. The characters scarcely leap off the page and that could have been worked on. The lovesick stuff could have been edited out and a lot more about the Nepalese included (and a bit less about the expats). All of this would have made the story more interesting.

The man did a good thing, I can't take that away from him. But you know, I am so fed up with all these expats going around solving all the world's problems and bigging themselves and each other up in books. The local Nepalese had done their best to take care of these children when they weren't paid and when they were hired. I would have liked to have known more about them instead of just brief portrayals of grindingly poor people who didn't seem to do anything at all.

Not a bad read, just not the enthralling story the hype promised. I don't really like being negative about someone who really has done a lot of good and continues to do so, so I will say to Connor Grennan, you have my full respect for your great efforts and successes with these little children, but your book was... a little tedious.

Read March 11, 2011. Review edited 11/10/2011 ( )

One of the better exemplars of the callow-youth-becomes-activist genre. Don't be put off by Grennan's initial pages, where, though I think he intends to present himself as brutally honest, he instead comes off as a guy who is ill-prepared and not very funny. After the book gets rolling, though, he does a much better job. Later in the story, I appreciated his honesty about not really knowing how to set up a US-based non-profit organization, and here the self-deprecating humor rang more true.

This is intended to be a balance of coming of age and social service narrative. The balance sometimes works and sometimes does not. At its best, Grennan describes a transformative experience. ( )

When the author decided to volunteer at an orphanage in Nepal for three months, he had no idea how deeply he would become involved with the children, nor that he would make it his mission to rescue children who had been trafficked.

I loved this book. The children's stories were compelling, and the children were so charming and resilient.

The only drawback is that is is similar to Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen, which I loved, but whose veracity was called into question. That is why I read this more as fiction rather than non-fiction. Still, I know that there is a large kernal of truth to the book. I'm sure that child trafficking does go on in the manner described, and is often times even more horrible. Nepal was, and still is, mostly unstable. I don't think that those facts can be disputed. ( )