Book and Activities: Chalkline
Overview
Chalkline follows nine-year-old Rafiq’s transformation from child to boy soldier.
Resource details
Publication date
Resource types
Activity pack, Books and literature, Further education resources, Secondary education resources, Teaching resource
Age levels
Age groups
Education themes
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Soldiers of the Kashmir Freedom Fighters are in search of new recruits at nine-year-old Rafiq’s school in rural Kashmir. They scrawl a line in chalk on the schoolroom wall. Any boy whose height reaches the line will be taken to fight. Rafiq is tall for his age and becomes the first boy to cross into a life of brutality and terrorism. So begins Rafiq’s transformation from child to boy soldier, indoctrinated into a cause of fanatical belief. But even when he no longer recognises himself, his family remembers the boy he was and hopes he will return.