The Home We Make

October 15, 2024
Grades K-3 An unnamed girl and her parents, experiencing war in their homeland, decide to emigrate to America. Recounting her story in a series of free verse poems, the child describes rockets that destroy her neighborhood and the long walk to docks where they board small boats that take them to a refugee camp. There they wait for visas, fly to America, settle in a small apartment, attend English classes at the community center, experience xenophobia, and finally feel at home in their new land. Khwaja's heartfelt verses in some ways reflect her own experiences of moving from Pakistan to the U.S. as a six-year-old, although her characters follow a more generic and timeless path to their new home. Faidhi's digital illustrations have a cinematic quality to them, not surprising from an animator of The Breadwinner. Each full-page spread contains intriguing details suggesting occurrences unmentioned in the poems, adding richness to the reading experience. She uses a wide color palette, a cartoon style, and conveys emotions mostly through expressive eyes. A poignant look at the longing for home.

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Starred review from August 15, 2024
A child escapes a war-torn country. The young protagonist's father first pockets his house key, then decides to leave it by the door, signaling that the family is unlikely to ever return. The family ends up at the sea, where they wait under a dock while the child uses a stick to trace an image of home into the sand. The next day, the picture of the house has washed away, but there are boats willing to take the family to their next destination--a refugee camp. Making new friends renders the family's instability and anxiety slightly easier to endure. Eventually, the family starts a new, more hopeful life in America, but they never stop missing home. Though the main characters are brown-skinned, their country of origin isn't identified; in an author's note, Khwaja discusses how her family, forced to leave Kashmir because of famine and flooding, moved to Pakistan and then, years later, emigrated to the United States. Written in verse, her powerful book captures both the terror of displacement and brief but meaningful moments of tenderness. Never shying away from the harsher details of migration, neither does she reduce the story to its trauma, creating a nuanced tale that will both inform those lucky enough to enjoy geographic stability and feel familiar to those who aren't. Popping with vivid colors, Faidhi's illustrations have a sweetness that tempers the story's bleaker moments. A moving and enlightening depiction of the refugee experience.(Picture book. 4-8)

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