quite brutal picture of life as a refugee, this is not for the faint hearted, The living conditions for these so called enemies of the state, imprisoned for very minor offences with literally no end in sight, its is actually quite unimaginable, A tough read, well written, I would have loved a bit more of an epilogue, What a brilliant book. Very hardhitting, thought provoking and emotional, Definitely a good introduction book for older children who are asking questions about why there are refugees and why they are leaving their country, The things the main character goes through are HORRIBLE, but I'm sure other refugees experience worse situations, I was really drawn to the characters and their lives, wanting a happy ending, I did think the story was really open ended, I need another book to see what happens next! It was his story but there were a lot of loose ends with his family.
Such a good story to build empathy for refugees, Shif, a young boy in a nameless but presumably Middle Eastern country, flees to avoid conscription, It's the start of a long journey to what he hopes will be freedom in England, meeting and losing different people along the way, The country is nameless, but the journey echoes those many people, many children, are being forced to take simply to stay alive, This is a heartfelt little book it would be great to use in a classroom as the start of a discussion about refugees,
Be aware, while the actual violence is restricted to some pushes and shoves and some 'offscreen' shooting, it's clear that some characters die during the book, A boat tips over and it's clear some people have drowned,
Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way, Set in an unnamed country, Shif and best friend Bini plan to escape in order to avoid military service but they dont act quickly enough,
Sent to prison in the middle of the desert, they are left in a container with a variety of deserters people who have spoken against the government and punished.
They are left with the decision of whether to escape and risk their lives, or stay and meet certain death,
Shif and Binis friendship is a highlight here, all knowing looks and unspoken understanding, It isnt until the escape that the action really picks up, with new characters offering more questions,
This would work really well with Eoin Colfers Illegal, as it depicts the struggle people have to find a better place, risking lives and being exploited along the
way.
Thoughtful, thoughtprovoking and raw, A powerful story. Id be happy to share this with a confident, resilient, secure class of Ychildren, it provides opportunities for rich discussions about poverty and injustice and cruelty, but Id urge caution the main character is often in real peril and he experiences the violent loss of people he is close to.
Read the whole novel before you think about sharing it with a whole class and watch very closely any child who chooses to read it independently
The violence and death does happen off screen, theres nothing explicit in the text, but the reader is absolutely aware that people have died.
I liked the structural device of starting the story with a flashforward thats then repeated verbatim at the end with an extension of that episode which finishes the story in a very satisfying way.
We always know where the main character is headed and that gives us some security, Shif has a happy life, unfamiliar with the horrors of his country's regime, He is one of the smartest boys in school, and feels safe and loved in the home he shares with his mother and little sister, right next door to his best friend.
But the day that soldiers arrive at his door, Shif knows that he will never be safe again his only choice is to run, Facing both unthinkable cruelty and boundless kindness, Shif bravely makes his way towards a future he can barely imagine,
Based on real experiences and written in spare, powerful prose, this gripping debut illustrates the realities faced by countless young refugees across the world today, is a story of friendship, kindness, hardship, survival, and above all hope, it was ok When Shif is forced to flee his home in most likely Eritrea to avoid being sent to prison for the "crimes" of his father, he is captured by soldiers, escapes, and tries to continue to journey to Europe without his family or friends.
This story illustrates some horrific things that people do to one another in the name of war and politics and can be hard to read at times, The ending is not pat, but does give readers a feel for the realistic upset of one's life, The reading level is right for upperMG readers despite the difficult content, This book was dark. Really dark. I think it's important subject matter, and we need to understand that these things happen, but I found it very difficult to read, I think some kids may be quite traumatized by it, Maybe not. Maybe most kids are immune to violence because of all the violent media, books, etc, But this felt different. This was realworld violence and realworld horror and it wasn't just the oppressive and violent regime: it was the slave traders and the smugglers too, It felt like the whole world was evil, Luckily we met Almaz and her family, But still, I found it very dark, without hope of a good ending, without hope of change, Again, maybe this is what we really need, to wake us up to what's happening around us, to make us try to change something, ButI think it might be too much for empathetic, sensitive kids who would like to change things but feel powerless to do so,
The writing was smooth, and I liked and cared about the main characters,
I suppose the author chose to set the story in an unnamed country possibly Eritrea so that it felt more universal, and so we'd focus more on the characters, but it did feel a little vague at times.
LONG SOAPBOX ALERT and Fahrenheit alert: And I have the same quibble I have with many books set in the desert: deserts are not scorching hot in the day, freezing cold that night, then scorching hot again the next day.
It's a myth. There can be quite a dramatic difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and if you don't have appropriate technology or clothing or shelter or water, or if you're trapped inside something, or if your clothes are soaked, it can be a very uncomfortable swing, but we're talking a difference ofdegrees Fahrenheit, maybeF in the most extreme places on the most extreme days.
Soif it'sin the day fairly hot, it could conceivablybut rarelydip toat night quite chilly after that hot of a day, but not "freezing,", and a more likely temperature would be.
When it'sorhere in Phoenix, Arizona, it never gets even pleasantly cool at night, In Phoenix, if it's onlyin the day, like sometimes in winter, it could dip below freezing at night, Butis not scorching hot, From my research, bigger swings than this are almost always associated with dramatic cooling or heating trends that will affect all temperatures for days, which means that it still won't swingordegrees everyhours, as so much of literature seems to imply.
The biggest swings probably won't happen in summer, and it's summer right now in the northern hemisphere, so this quick study I just did is not optimal, plus it's mostly based on cities, which tend to trap heat and thus moderate temperatures swings, but I just looked at tomorrow's daytime highs and nighttime lows in these northern hemisphere locations which are in or near deserts: Phoenix, Arizona Ajo, Arizona a small town Death Valley, California Khartoum, Sudan Sabha, Libya a big town, but not a huge city Riyadh, Saudia Arabia Asmara, Eritrea.
And these southernhemisphere cities: Alice Springs, Australia Windhoek, Namibia, The differences between high and low temps are mostly arounddegrees F, The highest wasF in Sabha, Libya, followed by Death Valley, withF degrees,
In Refugee, when they were in the metal box cars, yes, it could totally be scorchingly, suffocatingly, dangerously hot inside those convection ovens and then cold at night.
But at one point they were walking through the desert and sweat was pouring down Shif's face and drying before it got to his shirtor something quite extreme like that.
Yet that night, it was very cold, UnlessorF was "very cold" to Shif, I simply do not believe this happens,
I've spent miserably coldeven snowynights camping in the deserts of the southwest USA, but the surrounding days were by no stretch of the imagination hot, I've spent miserably hot summers in the desert, but the summer nights are by no stretch of the imagination cold, Ever. My deserts are lusher than many other deserts, and that's a moderating factor, I have not spent time in the more extreme deserts in northern Africa or the Middle East, so it could be quite different there, but I still don't think it's scorching hotfreezing coldscorching hotfreezing cold.
Sorry for my soapbox, It's just that Refugeeis about the fourth book I've read recently fiction AND nonfiction that perpetuates this myth / exaggeration, and I really want someone to debunk itor explain to me how all of my personal desert experience and all of the raw temperature data I've collected at various times can be wrong.
Or maybe I want people to start talking more realistically about how it can be hot in the day and quite cool at night if you're sleeping rough, or warm in the day without shade but cold at night.
This issue did not hugely affect my view of the book, nor should it deter others, But I had to get the rant out, Thanks for listening.
END SOAPBOX
For such a dark book, perhaps the ending was appropriate, but it delivered far less hope than I would have liked,
This book was very dystopian and already started off in a very sad place, The plot was good although too much was cut out in my opinion, I think the author mightve done it on purpose because the boy was trying to escape the country so he had to leave behind a lot of family and friends.
Also it ended way too abrupt, I think there couldve been a whole other book of when he lands in europe and maybe once hes settled he goes on a quest to find his family he left behind.
It made me cry when I was only a quarter in the book, but again i think the author couldve shown his grief more as the death was never mentioned again.
Overall i think the author might have written like this on purpose but I wasnt keen,
P. s I wouldve loved to know what country it was based in Oh, Em. Gee. This book was filed in the childrens book section of my library app, so I didnt quite expect what was coming, Not an easy read, for sure, but definitely one that was worth reading, I started this when I got into bed at,pm on boxing day and basically stayed awake til afterpm because I simply couldnt put it down,
We start the book with a ship capsizing in the middle of the ocean and a boy struggling to get to the surface, Then no sooner has it started, we rewind back to the beginning of the story,
Shif is an ordinary boy of, He lives with his mum and his little sister, he goes to school favourite subject is maths, and he loves playing chess with his best friend Bini, But when his mum realises hes about to be taken away to do his mandatory military service, and that because his dad has already been disappeared by the government, the chances are that they will do the same for him, they hatch a plan for Shif and Bini to be smuggled from the country.
But the night before Shif and Bini are due to leave, the soldiers come for them and bundle them away to a prison in the middle of the desert.
I say prison, its basically a shipping container no windows, no air, a bucket for a toilet, Roasting hot during the day, and freezing cold during the night,
When Shif and Bini get inside, they realise that their new cellmates have been there for a long time, and the likelihood is that they wont be leaving either.
But their cellmates have been waiting for a new arrival for a while, They know that they will never leave, but they dont want their stories to be lost, to die unknown in the middle of nowhere,
So they hatch a plan to help Shif and Bini escape from the prison, but thats only the start of the nightmare for the poor boys,
Heartbreakingly written in first person, the perspective only served to amplify the horrors of what was happening, I couldnt help but think of theyear olds in the youth group I lead and I could hardly bear to imagine them in a situation like this,
I was honestly in shock for a large proportion of this book, it was so brutal and raw and completely unexpected for a book that was in the childrens section.
Id say its definitely more young adult than childrens, the topics may be quite hard to understand for a smaller child, even though I think its important we all realise the reality of whats happening across the world.
Posted on: sitelink seelefo For years I have tried to get myyear old son interested in reading, He enjoyed it when he was younger and we would read to him but it's been a struggle getting him to read since then, So when he came to me and told me that I had to read this book that he had to read for school I agreed to do so, I honestly wasn't expecting too much but he was excited about it and I couldn't tell him no, although I was trying to get other books finished before the end of the year.
I am so glad that I agreed to read it, This was actually a really good book,
Shif is ayear old boy living somewhere in the Middle East the exact location was unnamed, He lives with his mother and younger sister, His father died when he was young, He goes to school, loves chess and math and is best friends with a boy named Bini, He is a typicalyear old boy and a relatively happy one,
And then everything changes,
Shif's life is turned upside down, beginning with the day that Bini does not show up for school, He then discovers that his life has not been what he believed it to be and everything he has ever known is gone from him,
Throughout his journey Shif meets friends in unexpected places and learns to do everything he can to survive,
It was gutwrenching making the inevitable comparisons between the life that Shif is living and my own son, I have, at times, tried to put myself in the shoes of the parents trying to flee from wartorn countries but to view it through the eyes of a child is even more harrowing.
I'm so glad that this is a book being read in schools and encourage everyone to read it, The tragedies of the story aren't overly descriptive or graphic and would be good for just about all ages, maybe starting ator so,
It doesn't have a necessarily happy ending as it's left somewhat open ended but it does have an ending of hope, which I honestly appreciated, It is not the type of story or situation that can be tied up with a pretty bow just to satisfy the reader, It wouldn't be as realistic that way, .