Penguin's Anniversary and Giveaway

Today is Penguin Books' official 75th anniversary! I am so pleased to be able to celebrate this event with you.

Penguin has set up a website to celebrate their anniversary, and you should check it out. I loved looking through the Penguin 75 list (one book for each year), and was pleasantly surprised by how many I have read.

Visit the website to learn the history of Penguin Books and the answer to the question, Why a penguin?

Here is one video that I particularly liked, but the entire series, available on the website, is interesting.

The Giveaway

As part of the celebration Penguin offered me the opportunity to choose a book from the Penguin 75 list to give internationally to one of my readers. Here's the book I picked:

I bought and read Zlata's Diary in the late 1990s. I don't remember much of the details, but I do remember the emotional journey as I read about how Zlata's life changed from one of school, friends, family, television, and music to a world of bombs, hunger, cold, fear, and death. This book is not about the politics of Bosnia but about how a young girl reacted to seeing the destruction of her city.

I will never be able to think of Sarajevo again without seeing at least some of it through Zlata's eyes. Although it won't take you long to read this moving diary of a preteen survivor of a modern European war, you will remember it and think about it for a long time.

Here's the publisher's summary:

When Zlata's Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian conflict, it became an international bestseller and was compared to The Diary of Anne Frank, both for the freshness of its voice and the grimness of the world it describes. It begins as the day-to-day record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovic becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighbor's cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.

I am happy to be able to offer one of you a copy of this book. The giveaway is open internationally. To enter, leave a comment telling me

• The title of one war book you have read or would like to read.
• Your email address.

This giveaway is open until I turn on my computer on August 9. Good luck and I hope you are as touched by Zlata's Diary as I was.