• Age: 9 to 13
• Grade: 4 to 8
• Reading age: 9 to 12

What weapon can children use to fight violence? A vote for peace!

Yeny and her family have escaped from the violence in their mountain village in Colombia to live in the city. But danger remains all around her — from groups of armed men who have kidnapped her uncle to a scary bully at school. Yeny feels powerless until her new friends decide to organize a peace carnival. Before long, the peace movement has attracted young people from across the country, and they decide to hold a national vote for peace.

Inspired by the Colombian Children’s Movement for Peace – on October 25, 1996, millions of kids throughout Colombia held a vote that resulted in one full day with no bombs, shootings, or kidnappings. The group has been nominated every year since then for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Michelle is the author of several books for children, and she enjoys telling the stories of kids who seize life's opportunities. When growing up in Port Moody, British Columbia, her favourite spot was the library. She loved cracking open the cover of a novel, taking a deep breath, and jumping into another life.

At university, Michelle studied literature, and between courses, she helped dig a water pipeline in the Dominican Republic and flipped burgers for a summer at a McDonald's in Germany. After graduating, she cycled 6000 kilometres across Canada, became a travel writer, taught creative writing in the Arctic, and worked as a simulated patient for medical students to practice on. She also married the pen pal that she'd been writing to since she was fourteen years old, and together they traveled around his home country of Argentina.

Michelle began writing for kids because she's always loved reading children's books. These days, when she's not writing or going on adventures, she enjoys reading, swimming, baking, hiking, and pedaling her bicycle around Victoria, British Columbia, where she lives with her husband and daughter. For more information about Michelle and her books, please visit her website at www.michellemulder.com.

Michelle Mulder's profile page

Highly readable in style, authentic in detail and tough to put down. The fiction-based-on-fact approach, which uses a lively young character to whom preteens will easily relate, is a perfect way to engage interest and initiate discussion.

CM Magazine

A moving story that will motivate children, highly recommended.

Children's Bookwatch

Yeny and the Children for Peace (Kids’ Power Book)