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Stories About Refugees: A YA Reading List

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ya refugee stories

 

I admit a lot of ignorance in regards to the refugee crisis in Syria. I’ve been trying to get a handle on it by reading the news and understanding what, exactly, is going on in that country that is making people flee in ways that are horrifying to even think about, let alone see in images and on video.

In an attempt to get some sort of understanding, I’ve been reading and watching what I can. A couple of the most valuable and insightful pieces I’ve experienced might be useful for others grappling with what’s going on:

 

 

 

Of course, these pieces are only the beginning and they’re not giving a full picture of the scope. It’s difficult to admit to ignorance, and it’s worse to not know where to begin educating yourself.

One way to delve into the lives and stories of refugees, though, is through fiction. I thought it’d be worthwhile to round-up some of the YA and upper middle grade offerings that highlight refugee stories. While not all refugee stories are the same — and not every issue going on in each country is identical nor even close to similar — the thing that matters most, or at least the part that’s easiest to think, talk about, and grapple with, is the human element. That’s what’s in these stories.

All descriptions are from WorldCat, and I would love any additional suggestions in the comments. I’m sticking to fiction, but feel free to recommend solid non-fiction titles, too. I’d love this to be a valuable resource for YA readers, educators, and librarians who are asked questions or want to highlight these stories today and in the future. Likewise, any worthwhile online resources would be welcome.

 

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90 Miles to Havana by Enrique Flores-Galbis: When unrest hits the streets of Havana, Cuba, Julian’s parents must make the heartbreaking decision to send him and his two brothers away to Miami via the Pedro Pan operation. But when the boys get to Miami, they are thrust into a world where bullies seem to run rampant and it’s not always clear how best to protect themselves.

 

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park: When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.

 

A Time of Miracles by Anne-Laure Bondoux: In the early 1990s, a boy with a mysterious past and the woman who cares for him endure a five-year journey across the war-torn Caucasus and Europe, weathering hardships and welcoming unforgettable encounters with other refugees searching for a better life.

 

Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins: Two Burmese boys, one a Karenni refugee and the other the son of an imprisoned Burmese doctor, meet in the jungle and in order to survive they must learn to trust each other.

 

The Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson: In 1998 when the Kosovo hostilities escalate, thirteen-year-old Meli’s life as an ethnic Albanian, changes forever after her brother escapes his Serbian captors and the entire family flees from one refugee camp to another until they are able to immigrate to America.

 

Deep Sea by Annika Thor: Nearly four years after leaving Vienna to escape the Nazis, Stephie Steiner, now sixteen, and her sister Nellie, eleven, are still living in Sweden, worrying about their parents and striving to succeed in school, and at odds with each other despite their mutual love.

 

 

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The Good Braider by Terry Farish: Told in spare free verse, the book follows Viola as she survives brutality in war-torn Sudan, makes a perilous journey, lives as a refugee in Egypt, and finally reaches Portland, Maine, where her quest for freedom and security is hampered by memories of past horrors and the traditions her mother and other Sudanese adults hold dear. With unforgettable images, the author’s voice sings out the story of her family’s journey, and tells the universal tale of a young immigrant’s struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures. Includes historical facts and a map of Sudan.

 

I Lived On Butterfly Hill by Marjorie Agosin: Eleven-year-old Celeste Marconi is a dreamer, a writer, a collector of words. But then a new whispered word trickles into her life: “Subversives.” Her beloved country of Chile has been taken over by a military dictatorship, and subversives–people considered a threat to the new government–are in increasing danger. Celeste’s doctor-parents must go into hiding to remain safe, and Celeste, heartsick, must say good-bye to them. But the situation continues to worsen. More and more people are “disappearing,” and soon Celeste herself is sent thousands of miles away, all the way to the coast of Maine–where she doesn’t have a single friend or know a word of English. How can she possibly call another country–a country where people eat breakfast out of a box, where the cold grays of winter mirror the fears that envelope her–home? WIll she ever see Chile again? And if she does–what, and who, will she find there?

 

Now Is The Time For Running by Michael Williams: When soldiers attack a small village in Zimbabwe, Deo goes on the run with Innocent, his older, mentally disabled brother, carrying little but a leather soccer ball filled with money, and after facing prejudice, poverty, and tragedy, it is in soccer that Deo finds renewed hope.

 

Out of Nowhere by Maria Padian: Performing community service for pulling a stupid prank against a rival high school, soccer star Tom tutors a Somali refugee with soccer dreams of his own.

 

Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings by Sophia Bennett: Three fourteen-year-old friends with very different interests befriend a twelve-year-old Ugandan refugee whose gift for design takes off in the high-fashion world of twenty-first-century London.

 

Shooting Kabul by NH Senzai: Escaping from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, eleven-year-old Fadi and his family immigrate to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Fadi schemes to return to the Pakistani refugee camp where his little sister was accidentally left behind.

 

 

 

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Tangled Threads by Pegi Dietz Shea: After ten years in a refugee camp in Thailand, thirteen-year-old Mai Yang travels to Providence, Rhode Island, where her Americanized cousins introduce her to pizza, shopping, and beer, while her grandmother and new friends keep her connected to her Hmong heritage.

** Readers who want a non-fiction look at Hmong refugee life in America will want to pick up The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. It’s an adult read but it should have teen appeal.

 

The Milk of Birds by Sylvia Whitman: When a nonprofit organization called Save the Girls pairs a fourteen-year-old Sudanese refugee with an American teenager from Richmond, Virginia, the pen pals teach each other compassion and share a bond that bridges two continents.

 

The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney: After her tribal village is attacked by militants, Amira, a young Sudanese girl, must flee to safety at a refugee camp, where she finds hope and the chance to pursue an education in the form of a single red pencil and the friendship and encouragement of a wise elder

 

Trouble by Gary D. Schmidt: Fourteen-year-old Henry, wishing to honor his brother Franklin’s dying wish, sets out to hike Maine’s Mount Katahdin with his best friend and dog. But fate adds another companion–the Cambodian refugee accused of fatally injuring Franklin–and reveals troubles that predate the accident.

 

Where I Belong by Gillian Cross: Thirteen-year-old Khadija, a Somali refugee, becomes a model for a famous fashion designer to help her family back home, while the designer’s daughter Freya and fourteen-year-old Abdi, whose family Khadija lives with in London, try to protect her.

 

Long Weekend Reading Part 2: Princeless

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princelessAfter finishing up Lumberjanes this weekend (and being very sad I didn’t have more to read immediately), I started on Princeless by Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin. This comic ticks so many of my boxes: fairy tale re-telling, a smart girl who can fight, a little big of magic, plenty of snark.

The protagonist of Princeless is Adrienne, a princess whose parents (the king and queen) have imprisoned her in a tower guarded by a dragon. It’s a tradition in their kingdom; the idea is that only the bravest, best (male) warrior will be able to defeat the dragon and rescue the princess, thereby earning the right to be the next king (women and girls cannot rule in their own right, of course). Adrienne learns of this tradition in a very Disney-fied way when she’s a little girl, and there’s some awesome snark where she just rails against this terrible story, begging her mother not to lock her up like that. But of course, that’s how it goes for her. At least at first.

Adrienne doesn’t put up with it for long. She’s formed a bond with her dragon, who has eaten many would-be dragon-slayers over the months (years?) she’s been in the tower. And when Adrienne decides enough is enough, the dragon – Sparky – helps her stage her own death so she can go rescue her sisters, who are similarly locked up in towers.

I love how Princeless plays with fairy tale tropes, mocking them in a loving sort of way. There’s one awesome scene where Adrienne decides to stop by a shop to get some armor that fits her (she had previously cobbled a set together from the dead knights’ leftovers). The female armor offered has names like the Diana, and it’s as impractical as the name would suggest. Of course, Adrienne is able to convince the smith (another girl who becomes her friend and adventures with her) that armor for women and girls doesn’t have to differ that much from armor for men and boys. It’s a perfect scene, great for the comic’s intended age group of middle grade readers.

One of the most important aspects of Princeless is that Adrienne is black. It’s really, really rare to find a black princess in a fairy tale story, particularly one so uber-white as Rapunzel. Whitley and Goodwin call attention to this, too, in an early part of the story, when one of Adrienne’s would-be rescuers refers to her as “fair,” as many fairy-tale knights do in other tales. “Be you a moron?” she says to him. “Do you know what fair means? You’re so anxious to take a wife! Why don’t you take a book first?”

I was reminded strongly of Shannon Hale and Dean Hale’s Rapunzel’s Revenge while reading this, as both focus on a re-telling of Rapunzel where the princess uses her own ingenuity to rescue herself. They’re natural readalikes for each other, though they’re not quite the same in tone, and the story post-escape plays out much differently. There’s also a strong Dealing With Dragons feel to it. I’m not sure how much today’s kids are still reading that series, but the relationship between Adrienne and Sparky is similar to that between Cimorene and her dragon. I have a feeling Cimorene and Adrienne would be great friends.

The art is great, perfectly friendly for a middle grade audience with character expressions full of personality. I’ve only read the first volume, which collects issues 1-4, but there’s a second one out that collects 5-8, plus a handful of other stories. Highly recommended.

Long weekend reading part 1: Lumberjanes

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lumberjanesLong weekends are for reading comics about girls who go on adventures. Or at least, that’s how my Labor Day weekend shaped up. First up was Lumberjanes, which I’d actually tried to purchase from two different comic book stores on two separate occasions and failed both times, as they had run out. Luckily, my library has all of the digital singles.

I’m a little late to the party on the Lumberjanes love, but if you’re like me and haven’t read it yet, here’s the gist: a group of five girls (they all seem to be around 12) are rooming in the same cabin at a camp similar to a Girl Scout camp. It’s a camp for “hard-core lady-types,” aka the Lumberjanes. They get caught up in a series of adventures involving a woman who turns into a bear, foxes who disappear, a secret underground cave, and lots of other fun magic. They also do the normal camp stuff like play capture the flag and make friendship bracelets.

The premise on its own sounds fun (and it is), but what makes this comic special is the humor, most of which is derived from the really great friendships between the girls. This is the first comic I’ve read where it feels like making the reader laugh is one of the main goals, not just a secondary one. And it succeeds really well – I was chuckling aloud to myself the entire time. This is actually a swear-free comic, so the girls say things like “What the junk!” and “What the Phillis Wheatley were you thinking?” instead. They earn badges like “naval gauging” and “everything under the sum” (a math-related badge). And the girls are awesome friends. One of their catchphrases is “Friendship to the max!” which serves as a sort of battle cry as they head into their next adventure. Their friendship is important to each other and it’s clear they care deeply for each other. I feel like they could be the pre-teen versions of the Rat Queens in some ways. And each girl is distinct in personality as well as look (including skin tone).

As a girl who went to Girl Scout summer camp a few times growing up, I appreciate the clever ways Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, and Brooke Allen work with the tropes of such a camp. I can say that I probably would have had a much better time if we fought raptors and solved anagrams in underground caves guarded by animated statues, but then it probably also would have been shut down pretty quickly. (One of the main points of humor in the story is the girls’ hapless counselor who can’t keep her wayward campers from getting into scrapes or make the boss lady understand there are really weird things going on). There’s an overarching storyline – what exactly is going on at the camp? – which provides the impetus to keep reading, but really, I’d read it even if each issue were a totally different story. This is definitely a winner (literally, too, since it’s won two Eisners). One of those Eisners was for best publication for teens, but I’d say this is totally appropriate for and appealing to middle grade readers as well. Highly recommended.

Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar

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I received Louis Sachar’s latest middle grade, Fuzzy Mud, in the mail a couple weeks ago and deliberately read it before I looked up any professional reviews. It’s a given I would purchase it for my library, but I wanted to make up my mind as to its quality without other librarians telling me about it first. This is unusual for me since I normally read (or at least skim) a copious amount of reviews for every book I read before I dive in. But I’m glad I went into this one pretty blind. (In case you’d like to know now, it’s gotten positive reviews from all major trade journals, with a starred review from Booklist.)

My verdict: It’s good, but it’s not great. It’s going to be compared to Holes; of course it is. In comparison to that nearly perfect middle grade book, Fuzzy Mud is not quite as deftly plotted, its characters not as rich. It feels a little thin. Taken separately from Holes, it’s still a worthwhile read with a great middle grade voice, but even then, I wouldn’t call it a great book. It is a very good one, though.

Tamaya Dhilwaddi is in the 5th grade, and her mother forces her to walk to and from school with 7th-grader Marshall Walsh. They’re supposed to avoid the woods, but one day Marshall shoots right for it, telling Tamaya angrily that he knows a shortcut. Unbeknownst to her, Marshall is being bullied by Chad, another 7th grader, who has threatened to beat him up on his way home that day. Marshall hopes to avoid the bully, and he doesn’t particularly want to explain it to Tamaya, who rushes to keep up with him.

It turns out there’s a good reason to avoid the woods. Tamaya stumbles across something she can only call “fuzzy mud,” because that’s exactly what it looks like. And Chad finds them anyway. In their rush to escape the bully, Tamaya throws some of the fuzzy mud into Chad’s face. They go home and try to forget the incident – except Tamaya now has a strange rash that won’t go away.

As Tamaya’s rash worsens, the school notices that Chad hasn’t been seen in a while. Tamaya is stricken, knowing that while she just got some of the fuzzy mud on her hands, Chad got it in his face. Marshall won’t tell anyone that Chad is in the woods, but Tamaya knows she has to go see if he’s still there, if he’s still alive. By now, the school is on lockdown, but Tamaya manages to get away. This time, Marshall follows her.

The story is told from Tamaya’s and Marshall’s alternating points of view, though Tamaya’s is a bit more memorable. Interspersed are transcripts from a national hearing about the fuzzy mud, which takes place sometime after the other events of the book and show how catastrophically things escalated. There are also some ominous mathematical equations whose sums demonstrate the same thing in a different way. Both plot devices are well-used and very Louis Sachar.

Just what exactly the fuzzy mud is unravels over the course of this pretty short (under 200 pages) book. It’s a cool and somewhat unsettling concept having to do with clean energy and more broadly environmentalism and scarcity of resources – plus some animals rights issues, possibly, and the science of mutation. These are absolutely concepts kids can get, and placing them in the context of bullying and an adventure in the woods makes them digestible and interesting. The book has a dash of Wayside School since an understanding of exponents is essential to the story. It’s a slightly weird book (and a funny one), perhaps not as weird as Holes, but it has the same sort of flavor. It’s definitely a Sachar book, with writing that speaks well to a middle graders. He just knows how to write for this audience.

Where I felt a little let down was the overall thinness of the story. Middle grade books definitely don’t have to be (and most shouldn’t be) doorstoppers, but 192 pages feels not quite long enough to tell this story adequately. There are a lot of big ideas presented very quickly, particularly in the sections with the hearing/debriefing of the fuzzy mud incident. And because these sections split up the adventure in the woods at several points, Tamaya and Marshall’s story feels a bit scant, too. I felt that the bullying subplot with Chad was a little underdeveloped as well – its resolution felt too pat and a bit touchy-feely, with Chad’s about-face coming easily and quickly.

These weaknesses aside, this is a unique, fun, and interesting book for kids from a writer who excels at writing middle grade. There will be high demand and the concept should make it an easy sell.

Review copy received from the publisher. Fuzzy Mud publishes today.

What I’m Reading Now

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I’ve taken this month off of blogging to relax in my reading. I’ve spent a lot of time laying on my couch, zoning out and listening to old audiobook favorites. In fact, I’ve been doing a lot of re-reading in general, in audio and in print. While organizing my bookshelves at my new home, I couldn’t help but page through some of the books that now sit on what I call my “books that changed my life” shelf. (Every time I pass by a copy of The Book Thief, whether my own or at a bookstore, I have to pick it up and read the last few pages.)

Now that my house is in order (more or less) and things seem to have settled down a bit more in my personal life, though, I’m really excited to dive back into new stuff, especially children’s and YA. I’m especially excited because I’m transitioning into a new job within my organization, one that is allowing me to return to youth materials collection management. So my post for today is a nice, healthy mix of the old and the new.

For starters, I’ve been working my way through the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. I first read a few of these as a teenager, then made a concerted effort to listen to them all on audio while I was in library school in 2009. I decided to re-listen to them all again after being reminded how great Barbara Rosenblat is, and the decision has been a good one. I’m currently on book number 8, The Hippopotamus Pool, and the entire series has been great fun. It’s been so good to reconnect with characters I have such fond memories of from both my childhood and my early adulthood. I love looking forward to a character being introduced or a particular event happening, and I love knowing that everything will work itself out happily – mostly – in the end (though it may take a few books to get there, and some endings are more bitter than sweet). Each time I re-read these books, I pick up more on Amelia’s character (she’s actually not a great sleuth, nor is her husband, and she’s quite a bit snobbier than I initially realized, though I still love her). Re-reading favorites is a great pleasure.

I’m pretty picky about the middle grade books I read, but Louis Sachar’s books are usually a good bet (Holes remains one of the best books for children I’ve ever read). He’s also local, which makes me more inclined to to read his stuff. Inevitably, anything Sachar publishes will be compared to Holes, which is probably unfair. In reading his latest, Fuzzy Mud, which will hit shelves in August, I tried to also evaluate it independently. The book is recognizably Sachar – a bit wry, a bit dark, with a plot that seems kind of goofy but is also quite serious. Sachar’s kid characters are brave and scared at the same time, and he never writes down to his readers. The plotting doesn’t match the mastery of Holes and the humor isn’t as overt as the Wayside School books, but it’s quite a good story regardless, with a few uniquely creative touches that I really appreciated. I’ll review this one more in-depth closer to its publication date.

I don’t remember where I got the recommendation for Jude Deveraux’s A Knight in Shining Armor (possibly a list of must-read canonical romance novels somewhere). I don’t know that I’ve ever read any Deveraux before, and this one had a few strikes against it already: it was written in the 80s (I have an unreasonable prejudice for any media created in that decade), it doesn’t have a typical happily ever after, the audiobook is narrated by a man (so awkward during certain scenes), and the heroine’s name is Dougless. Thankfully, this last strike has an explanation within the novel, though it takes a while to get to it. Overall, I’m enjoying it. It’s a little campy, but in a fun way. Once I got past the setup describing how awful Dougless’ situation was with her terrible boyfriend (a bit too pathetic and something I probably would have skimmed in a print book) and the literal knight in shining armor showed up from the 17th century, things got a lot more interesting. Right now, Dougless and her knight are stumbling around in the 1980s as he tries to convince her he actually has traveled from the past. Later, I know they’ll travel back to the 17th century, and that should be extra fun. It feels kind of like Outlander lite – there’s a hunky man from the past, but a lot less violence and mortal peril.