Story Boat
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
When you have to leave behind almost everything you know, where can you call home? Sometimes home is simply where we are: here. An imaginative, lyrical, unforgettable picture book about the migrant experience through a child's eyes.
When a little girl and her younger brother are forced along with their family to flee the home they've always known, they must learn to make a new home for themselves -- wherever they are. And sometimes the smallest things -- a cup, a blanket, a lamp, a flower, a story -- can become a port of hope in a terrible storm. As the refugees travel onward toward an uncertain future, they are buoyed up by their hopes, dreams and the stories they tell -- a story that will carry them perpetually forward.
This timely, sensitively told story, written by multiple award--winner Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Rashin Kheiriyeh, introduces very young readers in a gentle, non-frightening and ultimately hopeful way to the current refugee crisis.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Maclear (Operatic) captures in lyrical verse the lives of two young refugees, for whom "here" is a different place every day. In warm, childlike drawings on blue pages, Kheiriyeh (Saffron Ice Cream) portrays a group of people dressed in thick overcoats, their belongings loaded in carts and suitcases, helping each other. A girl in the group speaks to a smaller boy about the few treasured belongings that give meaning to their existence. Their teacup is one: "Every morning,/ As things keep changing,/ We sit wherever we are/ And sip, sip, sip.../ From this cup." A page turn corresponds to a new perception: "And this cup is a home." Kheiriyeh draws the children within the cup underneath a bright orange sun. More cherished objects the family's blanket ("patterned and soft"), their lamp, a field of flowers become the children's "here." And as the blanket becomes a sail, the lamp a lighthouse, and so on, the objects combine, becoming a boat that carries everyone over the waves, and a story that takes the group at last to a welcoming place. The creators tell a refugee story in simple language with everyday objects, making it graspable for young readers. Ages 3 7.
