"A powerful refugee journey from the point of view of young children"
Shortlisted for the Children's & YA Jhalak Prize 2024
The author explains in a note at the end of the book that there are 13 million child refugees in the world, and that every year tens of thousands of children have to leave their homes, sometimes going alone, sometimes in company to search for safety and a place to live. This is a perfect book to open up some of those conversations we all need to have about war and understanding.
In this powerful tale two siblings set off with only backpacks. The older sister tries to make it into a game – you only need to avoid the monsters and keep moving. They wear brightly coloured carnival masks as the masks will help to hide them, but if they are caught then they are out…. The strange progress of a journey like this is shown in the words and pictures – the longueurs of waiting, the playing on the way, the different means of movement – and all the different dreams of the characters. As the awfully long journey progresses the younger boy becomes overwhelmed by it, whilst the sister urges him on as realisation dawns on him it is not a game at all.
The colour in this book is used very carefully, with lots of muted tones with only flashes of colour and the brightly coloured children’s masks adding to the white pages. The monsters are rendered as ink blot type monsters, so no uniforms – so that the book could apply to any child and any nationality.
This book, I am sure, will stimulate empathy for the brother and sister and other refugees through the use of such rich symbols and everyday emotions. Carrying such a strong message portrayed in a simple form this book needs reading over and over as children welcome more and more refugees into their homes and schools.
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