A Book To Help Us Understand

        Visit Alyson Beecher on Wednesdays for Non-Fiction Picture Books at Kidlit Frenzy.  From Alyson and others, you will discover terrific nonfiction picture books!

         Tomorrow is the International Day of Peace. Many are invited to share something on social media or a blog post about your wishes for peace. Here is a post that gives the history of this day. Look to the right and click on the dove to find one invitation.

        It's an appropriate time to share Stormy Seas: Stories of young boat refugees by Mary Beth LeatherDale, illustrated by Eleanor Shakespeare. There are people all over our world who need to flee their homes to find safety. Eleanor has filled the pages with starkly created  pages of paintings, parts of photographs, maps, graphic images that tell a tale of heartbreak and hope, courage and despair as Mary Beth tells the stories of five refugees, this time those who can be called "boat people." At the time of their flights, they were children, sometimes with family but often alone. Each one spoke of starving, going without water. Each spoke of being terrified of drowning, but expressed in different ways that there was no going back, they would rather die. 

    

      In these situations, the descriptions of the journeys and then the life in the migrant or detainment camps are starkly told. Most sold everything, used all savings in order to escape terrible dangers only to face others . Sadly, their hopes and sacrifices continued to be hard, even when they survived the horrific boat rides. They also experienced discrimination upon arrival, during the time they were finally allowed to become part of the new countries, struggled and struggled for years. 

     The book is organized around those five journeys with a table of contents, a timeline of escapes by boat since World War II, resources, cedits and acknowledgments. The individual parts give an intro about the person, a part in his or her own words, and a "What Happened To" section. Within that text, there are illustrated maps, small bits of other information like a personal timeline. 

The Breadwinner Trilogy-Heartache and Admiration for Children

At the blog, Gathering Books, Myra, Fats and Iphigene share so many wonderful books for and about children from all over the world.  They also host a reading challenge, to read and review books that have won some award in their history.  Today I am happy to review a trilogy I just completed.

The Breadwinner Trilogy – written by Deborah Ellis

This trilogy contains three separate books:  The Breadwinner, Parvana’s Journey, and Mud City.  The Breadwinner has won several awards, including the Peter Pan Prize and the Middle East Book Award in 2002.  Deborah Ellis herself has been honored with several prizes according to GoodReads: The Governor General's Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, the University of California's Middle East Book Award, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award.  Deborah Ellis spent several months in refugee camps in Pakistan interviewing  women and girls to discover their stories.

The first book, The Breadwinner, tells the story of Parvana, an eleven-year-old Afghan girl who, because of her father’s arrest and disappearance, ends up pretending to be a boy so she can be free to earn money on the streets of Kabul.  During this time of making the only money the family has, Parvana makes a friend, Shauzia, also living on the streets as a boy.  And the family is helped by their former physical education teacher, a Mrs. Weera. This book for middle grade readers explores the harsh realities we can only imagine in living with the Taliban restrictions.  Women and girls have been kicked out of their jobs, cannot even walk the streets without a male accompanying them.  The family’s home has been destroyed and they now live in one room in one part of a bombed-out building.  Without telling the ending, tragedy occurs and Parvana ends up alone, on her own, and the reader moves into book two, Parvana’s Journey.  Finally, book three, Mud City, tells the story of Shauzia, whose biggest wish is to get to the sea, and to a France that has lavender fields like the magazine picture she carries always. 

Parvana shows the courage and resourcefulness of a young girl as she wanders, ending up with a young boy with one leg, a baby, and then a younger girl.  The four have a dream-like existence in a valley until it too is destroyed by bombs.  Shauzia’s story shares the heartbreak of refugees in a camp in Pakistan, the challenges of surviving in a city, Peshawar, that has thousands of children and adults on the streets begging or trying to get work in order to buy food.

I admire Deborah Ellis for leading us on a journey of these children’s stories.  I don’t think I will ever understand how people can be so cruel to one another.  And Ellis shows so well the resilience and resourcefulness of children, who, when needed, can step forward at a very young age to do what is needed to help themselves and their families/friends survive.  Walking in Parvana’s or Shauzia’s shoes can be a powerful experience if you choose to use these books as readalouds.  I imagine many conversations about survival and hope, even in the face of extreme hunger.  There is quite a lot of violence in the books, but I would recommend them for 5^th grade and up.  

Tara Smith, who blogs at A Teaching Life in this Nerdy Book Club post, wrote an excellent review of these books, including the 4th one, continuing story of Parvana.  She has used the books with her 6th graders and shares why they are an important group of books for students to read.

If you wish to see more about the tragedy of Afghans living in Pakistani refugee camps, here is a photo article from the New York Times, April 2013.  The Breadwinner was first published in 2000.