A graphic novel series, Echoes of the Lost Boys of Sudan, tells in graphic form the true personal stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan. The first book of this series, shows how four the lost boys escaped their burning villages and helped each other survive their first days of escape.

We were young boys when war broke out in our country. We had been living peacefully in different villages, when the armies from the north attacked. This book is the record of our escape.

The Sudanese civil war orphaned 30,000 youths. Children fleeing the violence swam through crocodile-infested rivers and slept in dense forests to avoid armed troops and wild animals. Along the way, many died from dehydration and starvation. Almost 4,000 of these Sudanese child refugees now live in the United States, many settling in North Texas. This nonfiction comic book series depicts the struggle for survival by some of these refugees.

In 2000 the United States began accepting 3,800 refugees from one of Africa’s longest civil wars. They were just some of the thousands of young men, known as “Lost Boys,” who had been orphaned or otherwise separated from their families in the chaos of a brutal conflict that has ravaged Sudan since 1983. The Lost Boys of Sudan focuses on four of these refugees. Theirs, however, is a typical story, one that repeated itself wherever the Lost Boys could be found across America. Jacob Magot, Peter Anyang, Daniel Khoch, and Marko Ayii were among 150 or so Lost Boys who were resettled in Atlanta. Like most of their fellow refugees, they had never before turned on a light switch, used a kitchen appliance, or ridden in a car or subway train—much less held a job or balanced a checkbook. We relive their early excitement and disorientation, their growing despondency over fruitless job searches, adjustments they faced upon finally entering the workforce, their experiences of post-9/11 xenophobia, and their undying dreams of acquiring an education. As we immerse ourselves in the Lost Boys’ daily lives, we also get to know the social services professionals and volunteers, celebrities, community leaders, and others who guided them—with occasional detours—toward self-sufficiency. Along the way author Mark Bixler looks closely at the ins and outs of U.S. refugee policy, the politics of international aid, the history of Sudan, and the radical Islamist underpinnings of its government. America is home to more foreign-born residents than ever before; the Lost Boys have repaid that gift in full through their example of unflagging resolve, hope, and faith.

One of thousands of children who fled strife in southern Sudan, John Bul Dau survived hunger, exhaustion, and violence. His wife, Martha, endured similar hardships. In this memorable book, the two convey the best of African values while relating searing accounts of famine and war. There’s warmth as well, in their humorous tales of adapting to American life. For its importance as a primary source, for its inclusion of the rarely told female perspective of Sudan’s lost children, for its celebration of human resilience, this is the perfect story to inform and inspire young readers.

Recent news media have exposed the horrific genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, and elsewhere, but little has been publicized about the unseen genocide committed by Muslims against millions of Christians in southern Sudan during the 1980s. From Africa to America: The Journey of a Lost Boy of Sudan provides a firsthand account of the atrocities caused by the same president and government committing genocide in Darfur today. Look through the eyes of one of the Lost Boys, a group of orphans who braved a dangerous trek through desert and jungle in order to flee the war-torn southern Sudan twenty years ago, as author Akol Makeer explains Sudanese cultural traditions and chronicles his life before and after the war. From Africa to America: The Journey of a Lost Boy of Sudan records years of human rights violations and bloodshed, the conversion of southern Sudanese from animism to Christianity during the war, the corruption of U.N. officials, and the sixteen-year journey of the Lost Boys from Sudan to Ethiopia, on to Kenya, and finally to religious and political freedom in America.

How did anyone manage to escape from the Nazi death camps or the killing fields of Cambodia? Great Escapes presents gripping accounts of narrow escapes to illuminate historical events from a distinct, personal perspective. Here are the brave individuals caught in history's worst atrocities-and their amazing will to survive. David Bol, one of Sudan's many "lost boys," tells of his four-month trek across Ethiopia to a refugee camp during a horrific civil war. William Wells Brown depended on the station masters on the Underground Railroad to help him escape to the North and to freedom from slavery. Jewish prisoners Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler smuggled out proof of Nazi extermination practices, outrunning German bullets to "tell everyone about Auschwitz." Primary sources add drama to each compelling narrative while the text addresses the broader significance of the event, the social issues at stake, and how society continues to be affected.