From Publishers Weekly
Over six million child combatants were killed or injured in the past decade. In this groundbreaking and comprehensive study, Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and former adviser to the U.S. military, explores the rise and expansion of child soldiery. Children, Singer finds, enter armies and militias in numerous ways: as voluntary soldiers, indoctrinated to kill; as involuntary soldiers, forced into the militia or military by cruel adults; as child-terrorists; as members of all-child armies (such as the Hitler Youth); and as sexual slaves for superior officers. Singer (Corporate Warriors) explores different means of training and indoctrination, often through interviews with child-soldiers, as well as with adults who have fought against them and others who have tried to rehabilitate children forced into warfare. In the concluding section, Singer notes that instruments of international law such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibit the use of child-combatants, but that these treaties have been ineffective in actually reducing the prevalence of child-soldiers. One hope is that the new International Criminal Court will be empowered to punish those who recruit children and send them into battle. However they seek to accomplish their goal, activists will be aided by the diligent research and reasoned analysis provided by Singer's study, as will those who fund their work—i.e., anyone who gives to international aid organizations. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* "The rebels told me to join them, but I said no. Then they killed my smaller brother. I changed my mind," explains "L," age seven, in Singer's chilling study of the now-conventional use of children in modern warfare. Some 43 percent (157 of 366) of all armed organizations around the world--from Sierra Leone to Colombia, Sri Lanka to the Congo, Liberia to Sudan--use child soldiers, 90 percent of whom see battle. In the last decade, more than 2 million children have been killed in combat, a rate of some 500 per day. Singer, National Security Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, came upon the phenomenon when the soldiers he interviewed for his first book, Corporate Warriors (2003), told him of seeing so many child adversaries. Here he details many of the underlying causes of the practice, and he explains how the children are recruited, often simply by whether they are strong enough to carry a weapon. He explores the full implications for using children in combat and discusses how the problem can be addressed, such as treating it as a war crime and punishing those leaders responsible. He neglects to say, though, that the abuse is first and best addressed by exposing it to world scrutiny, which this thoughtful and heartfelt book will do. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“It is hard to imagine anything worse than turning innocent children into ‘callous killers capable of the most terrible acts of cruelty.’ In this vital and compelling book, Peter W. Singer forces us to confront this awful problem head on, shows how children are dehumanized and turned into killers, and how to deal with the problem. We continue to ignore this crisis only at our peril. Attention must be paid to this book, and to its cogent recommendations.”
–Kati Marton, Author of Hidden Power and Former Chief Advocate, United Nations Office of Children and Armed Conflict

“Fascinating…[A] heartfelt, valuable book …Singer has gathered his evidence masterfully.”
–Ralph Peters, New York Post

“An important book… Singer could not have chosen a more heart-wrenching subject, and he leads us carefully through this tender and brutal landscape…[He] is to be commended for drawing attention to the plight of child soldiers…”
–Austin Merrill, San Francisco Chronicle

“Groundbreaking and comprehensive…Activists will be aided by the diligent research and reasoned analysis.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Nowhere else is there a more compact, compelling portrait of this devastating problem that the world must not ignore.”
–Michael B. Farrell, Christian Science Monitor

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Children at War is the first comprehensive book to examing the growing and global use of children as soldiers." "P. W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in twenty-first-century warfare, explores how a new strategy of war, utilized by armies and warlords alike, has targeted children, seeking to turn them into soldiers and terrorists." "Interweaving the voices of child soldiers throughout the book, Singer looks at the ways these children are recruited, abducted, trained, and finally sent off to fight in war-torn hot spots, from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone. He writes about children who have been indoctrinated to fight U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; of Iraqi boys between the ages of ten and fifteen who had been trained in military arms and tractics to become Saddam Hussein's Ashbal Saddam (Lion Cubs); of young refugees from Pakistani madrassahs who were recruited to help bring the Taliban to power in the Afghan civil war." Finally, Singer makes clear how the U.S. government and the international community must face this new reality of modern warfare, how those who benefit from the recruitment of children as soldiers must be held accountable, how Western militaries must be prepared to face children in battle, and how rehabilitation programs can undo this horrific phenomenon and turn child soldiers back into children.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Foreign affairs expert Singer (Corporate Warriors) offers an illuminating work on the use of child soldiers in conflicts across the globe. This endemic problem involving some 300,000 child combatants is attributable to a tangle of factors including extreme poverty, AIDS, a worldwide glut of light automatic weapons, and a lack of political will to enforce laws. Unscrupulous leaders see children as inexpensive, malleable, and easily replaceable fighters who can be used to plunder villages, traffic drugs, and seize control of resources. Children are abducted sometimes as young as age six and desensitized to acts of violence. The impact on child survivors is traumatic: devoid of education and unfamiliar with normal patterns of social behavior, they are not easily rehabilitated and reintegrated into their families. Singer outlines a cogent program for thwarting the use of child soldiers and argues passionately that the U.S. military and other armed forces should develop training and doctrine to cope effectively with child combatants. Recommended for all academic and public libraries.-Edward J. Metz, USACGSC Combined Arms Research Lib., Ft. Leavenworth, KS Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews