LoveReading4Kids Says
Longlisted for the UKLA 2018 Book Award | Shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017 and awarded the Amnesty CILIP Honour | Shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2016.
A heartfelt, harrowing insight into life as a Rohingya refugee in an Australian detention centre, told through the unforgettable voice of an unforgettable boy.
Subhi is one of the Limbo kids in a permanent Australian detention centre, the first to be born in the camp after his Maá and big sister Queeny fled violent persecution in Burma. While he’s only experienced life within the cruel confines of the camp, Subhi’s rich imagination has conjured a magical, solace-giving world in which the Night Sea from his Maá’s tales brings him treasures from his dad. Stories are Subhi’s lifeline. He needs them “to make my memories” and imagines a blanket of stories, a “gigantic blanket big enough to warm everyone”.
A new story treasure transforms Subhi’s world in the form of Jimmie, a local girl who finds her way into the camp. She too knows heartache. She’s lost her mum, who used to tell her special tales and gave her a bone sparrow necklace that “carried the souls of all her family”. When Jimmie enters Subhi’s life, he wonders if she’s his guardian angel, though he hadn't expected an angel to have more holes in her clothes than him. And, on meeting Subhi, Jimmie realises that she’s “never had a friend she wanted to share everything with before”, and so she shares her mum’s stories with him, stories he reads to her since she’s unable to read them herself.
Subhi's unique voice will weave its way into your heart and under your skin. His descriptions of life in the centre are hauntingly evocative. You feel, for example, the heat of days that get his “skin creeping” and make everything “jangly and loud and scratchy”. Through Subhi, readers experience how it might feel to have no home or voice, and how friendship can lighten the darkest of circumstances. One hopes, as Subhi’s Maá says, that “someday they see we belong.” Both elegant and raw, this is an important and timely novel that bears witness to the risks people take to make their voice heard, and to the resilience of the human spirit.
Joanne Owen
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Zana Fraillon Press Reviews
This is a tragic, beautifully crafted and wonderful book whose chirpy, stoic hero shames us all. I urge you to read it The Independent
The story of Subhi, sensitively told and immensely moving, gives us a glimpse of what homeless, imprisoned existence life feels like... and how the hope invested in a vision of a better future can end up being the difference between making it out, and surrendering to despair. The Big Issue
Stories can change how people think and this book aims to do just that Claire Hennessey, Irish Times
The Bone Sparrow is already drawing comparisons with The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. The language captures the children's confusion, their hope mixed with worry over their families and dreams of freedom, but the novel doesn't flounder in abject misery when it easily could Yorkshire Post
With an affecting and distinctive narrative voice ... she builds a convincing and complete world. Moving and memorable, The Bone Sparrow deserves to be read by all who care about our common humanity The Guardian
While addressing themes of loss, desperation, and injustice in an all-too-relevant setting, Fraillon's resonant novel underscores the healing power of story. Starred Review from Publishers Weekly
Cleverly imagined and very affecting Belfast Telegraph
Stories can change how people think and this book aims to do just that Irish Times
Deeply moving novel Aldershot News & Mail
A profoundly poignant novel Metro (Across UK)
...a special book Morris Gleitzman, author of the acclaimed Once series
Outstanding ... This is an important, heartbreaking book with frequent, unexpected humour, that everyone, whether teenager or adult, should read. Guardian
A contender for the children's book of the year... It is a heartrending tale about how our stories make us, and also an angry polemic, vividly convincing in is detailed description of what it means for your home to be a tent in the dust behind a guarded fence. The Sunday Times
A profoundly poignant novel about what it means to live as a refugee, neither inside nor out. METRO
The writing is beautiful and the message of survival and bravery a universal one The Bookseller
Zana Fraillon's powerful and poetic tale of friendship in the face of injustice will fly away with your heart. Katharine Marsh, Edgar Award-winning author of The Night Tourist
An incredibly moving and powerful story about hope, freedom and survival. This is such an important topic, and a heart-achingly realistic story - everyone, both teenagers and adults, should read it. Rachel Meier, Waterstones Canterbury Waterstones.com
What a powerful story. Detention camps are no place for children. No place for humans. Clare Hall-Craggs Book Trust
Think of it as a powerful polemic, yes, but also think of it as a story of the redeeming power of friendship and the vital nature of storytelling The Bookbag
A heart-rending, beautiful story. From the first line I knew that I would be utterly moved by the words written so passionately, weaving a narrative that is at times difficult to read. This is a book that will make change happen The Book Activist blog
This book made me cry in Temple Gardens at page 21. Loving it Grass for Dinner Blog
So beautiful. And so important... encourages empathy. For kids and adults alike! The Book Addict blog
The Bone Sparrow - a vital and necessary book - should be in all schools throughout the UK and in the hand of every politician! Sean Edwards, YLG Librarian
This is an important, heart-breaking book, with frequent, unexpected humour, that everyone, whether teenager or adult, should read The Guardian.com
This is quite simply a heart-rending, beautiful story... the story is woven by an author who is clearly passionately wanting to address an issue that is now so prevalent in our world; surely it cannot be ignored. This is a book that will make change happen. Reading Zone
A heartrending tale about how our stories make us, and also an angry polemic, vividly convincing in its detailed description of what it means for your home to be a tent in the dust behind a guarded fence The Sunday Times
One of those rare, special books that will break your heart with its honesty and beauty, but is ultimately hopeful and uplifting Book Trust
