Review by New York Times Review
LAST YEAR, during a visit to a school in Birmingham, England, I met a seventh grader who told me he had traveled there from Syria as a refugee. I wasn't equal to imagining what that journey was like. Yet here was this rosycheeked boy in a British school uniform, clearly a survivor, sitting in on my author event along with 150 other interested students. I tried to respond. "You must be... " Brave? Resourceful? Determined? I struggled for an appropriate word. The boy filled in the gap himself. "Unstoppable!" he pronounced triumphantly. And "unstoppable" is the word that best fits the fictional children in three timely, poignant and sometimes tragic new novels describing the current global refugee crisis. Two address the plight of Syrian refugees; one takes a more general look at the common suffering of those who choose, or who are forced, to leave a turbulent homeland. All three revolve around a pivotal and devastating shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea, which must be crossed before a better life can be found on European soil. It feels inevitably, exhaustingly appropriate that Europe should be the focal point for the worst humanitarian displacement crisis our interconnected global community has experienced since World War II. THAT WAR IS VERY MUCH remembered in NOWHERE BOY (Roaring Brook, 368 pp., $16.99; ages io to 14), by Katherine Marsh, a resistance novel for our time, and the parallels between the two crises are both natural and sobering. "Nowhere Boy" tells the story of Ahmed Nasser, a Syrian teenager who flees his home to escape the civil war that killed his sisters, mother and grandfather. After losing his father during the sea crossing, Ahmed makes it as far as Brussels, where he becomes friends with Max Howard, an American expat his own age. Together, the boys find a way to hide and support Ahmed for nine whole months. Marsh sets her tale against the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks of 2015-16 and the ensuing anti-Muslim backlash in Belgium, and she does a superb job of making her story parallel the stifling atmosphere of Nazi occupation. Max takes his inspiration from local wartime resistance heroes, but in Brussels he's almost as much of an immigrant as Ahmed, a foreigner who struggles with a new school and an unfamiliar language. Ahmed remains in control of his own destiny throughout, and Max's well-intentioned schemes don't always work. But both boys are determined to survive and to do "the decent thing." Marsh makes her European setting and viewpoint easily relatable for young American readers, and in addition to a vivid supporting cast of policemen, teachers, family, friends and enemies-turned-friends, there's a nail-biting race across Europe and an uplifting ending. "Nowhere Boy" is elegantly structured, plausible in its improbable plot and studded with moments of rapturous prose. The book ends on a single word that sums up its entire message: "Hope." THE GRAPHIC NOVEL ILLEGAL (Sourcebooks, 144 pp., $14.99; ages 10 and up), Written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin and illustrated by Giovanni Rigano, offers a similar message. Ebo, the story's young hero, is from sub-Saharan Africa. We see through his eyes as he journeys across the desert with his brother Kwame, and then across the Mediterranean, on a quest to find their vanished elder sister, Sisi. The sea journey ends in disaster as Kwame is drowned, along with most of the other desperate passengers on their overcrowded ship; Ebo is picked up by a rescue helicopter and ends up in a refugee center in Italy. There is an unlikely but heartwarming reunion at story's end, promising Ebo a brighter future. Ebo's story is told in flashbacks, beginning with his later journey across the Mediterranean and then alternating with his earlier trek across Africa. Structural flashbacks like these are often used as a shortcut to plunge the reader into narrative action, and apart from that, there's no obvious reason "Illegal" couldn't be told in chronological order. But the contrast between the warm golds and browns of Africa make a stunning visual pattern as they alternate with the blues, greens, grays and purples of the sea voyage, and it works. The visual aspect of "Illegal" is both manageable and richly complex; there is a gorgeous and glorious level of detail and attention to hue in Rigano's illustrations, which lift a relatively straightforward story to a higher plane. The graphic novel format, and Rigano's inspired illustrations, drive and enhance Colfer and Donkin's written dialogue. The complete package is a highly accessible introduction to the plight of all refugees. The surprising reunions at the end of "Nowhere Boy" and "Illegal" give us the taste of hope. But hope is relative. Like Holocaust victims, our main characters lose entire families during their journeys: a situation so desperately grim, and so unthinkable, that one single other survivor constitutes a happy miracle. When a story doesn't end in the worst-case scenario, the death of the main character, it fools us into thinking that losing your home and most of your family can have a happy ending. THERE IS NO SUCH MIRACLE in the graphic novel ZENOBIA (Seven Stories, 94 pp., $19.95; ages ii and up), written by Morten Dürr and illustrated by Lars Horneman. "Zenobia" is not so much a novel as a fable, a vignette in a lost life. The title character, Zenobia, is a Syrian child whose parents vanish (presumably killed in the war that we see shattering her city) and who attempts to leave her devastated and war-torn home with her uncle. The fragile ship Zenobia boards for the Mediterranean crossing to Europe, like that of Ahmed and Ebo, is lost at sea. Zenobia's namesake is a warrior queen who united Syria and conquered surrounding civilizations in ancient times. Our young Zenobia uses her national hero's name as an inspiration for strength and courage, even in the moment of her death. The legacy of her name is Zenobia's only comfort on her pointless journey; but is it pointless if we learn from it? "Zenobia" highlights, with simple clarity, Syria's noble historical legacy as well as the plight of its modern people. Zenobia's short and tragic story, inspired no doubt by 2015's searing media image of the drowned Syrian child Alan Kurdi, is harrowing and instructive. If there is a single moment from these books that will prove impossible to forget, it is the full-page spread in "Illegal" in which Ebo's drowned brother drifts lifeless beneath the sea, surrounded by the other lifeless bodies of friends and strangers, fish nibbling at their exposed skin. This image, shocking and moving, represents the theme of wasted life that runs through all three books - a memorial to the dead and, to the unstoppable living, a call to action. ELIZABETH WEIN'S first nonfiction book, "A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II," will be published in January.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Ten-year-old Ebo has lost his parents, his Uncle Patrick is always drunk, and his older sister Sisi is missing. And then his older brother Kwame vanishes to search for Sisi and find a better life in Europe. With nothing left tying him to their tiny Ghanaian village, Ebo boards a bus to Agadez, Niger, determined he'll somehow reunite with Kwame. Nineteen months later, Ebo and Kwame, with 12 others in a leaking dinghy made for six, are desperately trying to reach Italian shores. The brothers have endured a harrowing journey through the Sahara Desert to Tripoli, Libya, hoping to cross the Mediterranean and land as refugees. The horrors Ebo witnesses and the impossibilities he survives constitute a haunting testimony to the human spirit. Artemis Fowl creator Colfer (who taught elementary school in Italy, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia) leads the team that was also behind the Artemis Fowl graphic adaptation in transforming staggering statistics (UNHCR's 2017 data cites 65.6-million have been forcibly displaced) into a resonating story about a single boy and what remains of his family. Italian artist Rigano's gorgeously saturated panels rich in detail, affecting in captured expressions, with landscapes made spectacular as a reminder of everyday beauty despite tragedy prove to be an enhancing visual gift to the already stirring story. A creators' note and quotes from real refugees round out this illuminating, important volume.--Terry Hong Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This achingly poignant graphic novel by Colfer and Donkin, collaborators on the Artemis Fowl graphic novels, imagines how one Ghanaian orphan ends up adrift in the Mediterranean. Ebo's older sister Sisi is already in Europe, and he knows his brother Kwame is headed there, too, so Ebo sets out to find him. It's clear that he succeeds, because the story opens on a scene of the two brothers drifting without food or water on the ocean. But in flashbacks, they see Ebo searching for Kwame in a teeming refugee hub in Niger. Punchy dialogue and wistful narration note both Ebo's poverty and his gifts: optimism ("I'm stronger than I look," he tells a boss), a talent for singing, and initiative (he parlays a box of wet wipes into cash by selling them one by one). Water is precious, and Ebo and Kwame endure periods of intense thirst. Rigano brings the brothers' struggle close, but his magnificent panels include moments of beauty, too. Clouds tower above the ocean, and starry skies light the desert. Refugees, readers will understand, are not statistics; everyone is an individual. Ages 10-up. Agent: Susannah Palfrey, Hachette Children's Group. (Aug.)? © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-8-Twelve-year-old Ebo's tale doesn't begin on the raft on his way to Europe. It doesn't begin as he works in the streets of Tripoli, Libya, to earn his fare. It doesn't begin with the journey across the Sahara or even in his home of Ghana. It starts when his brother, Kwame, leaves home to find their sister, Sisi, long departed for Europe. Not content with a life of poverty, Ebo, too, takes off, close on his brother's heels. Colfer and Donkin gloss over nothing in their portrayal of undocumented immigration, from illness and violence to poverty and corruption. Throughout the months of hard labor he must endure to pay for a ticket, sleeping outdoors and depending on the kindness of strangers, Ebo remains determined. Rigano's dynamic images keep readers on the edge of their seats, and the portrayal of tenacious Ebo is elegant but unromanticized. In a scene toward the end, in which rescue is uncertain, the authors firmly assert that no human is illegal; Ebo says, "They must help us, we are people." The novel concludes with a starkly illustrated true account of an immigrant who faced trauma in her quest for a better life. VERDICT A thrilling and moving addition to any collection, and ideal supplemental reading in classes where students are studying immigration.-Anna Murphy, Berkeley Carroll School, Brooklyn © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
When twelve-year-old Ebo discovers that his older brother Kwame left their village in Ghana to find their sister, who immigrated to Europe, Ebo strikes out on his own and follows Kwame. Reunited in Niger, the brothers cross the Sahara Desert by truck and on foot and arrive in Tripoli, where they board a rotten, patched-up inflatable boat that soon rips. A larger, already crowded vessel carrying migrants rescues them. Passengers are a sea of facesall of them looking to Europe. All of them have their own reason for making this terrible journey. When the boat capsizes, sending hundreds into the water, they are approached by a helicopter that can only rescue so many. Chapters alternate between now and then; now takes place at sea, and then tells of Ebos sojourn from home to the point where he and Kwame board the boat. Moments of resilience, loyalty, and generosity stand out, but perhaps most moving are the close-up panels of faces in distress, the roiling ocean, bodies flailing in the water, and haunting images of death. Detailed renderings of crowded boats and cramped trucks have an appropriately photojournalistic quality. Visceral and poignant, this graphic novel (like Don Browns The Unwanted, rev. 9/18; and Morten Drrs Zenobia, rev. 11/18) humanizes an ongoing tragedy and implicitly asks whether it should ever be illegal to help a child in need. julie hakim Azzam January/February 2019 p 87(c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ebo is known across his village for his beautiful singing voice, but will his voice keep him safe in his journey to the shores of Europe? Readers follow the flight of Ebo, a Ghanaian refugee child, to Europe to find the siblings who fled before him. Ebo's journey takes him across the scorching heat of the Sahara and through the streets of Tripoli, where he works to raise funds for passage across the Mediterranean. All the while, Ebo and the companions he meets along the way must elude the watchful eyes of the authorities who are constantly on alert for refugees. But after Ebo finally saves enough money and secures a seat on a boat crossing to Greece, he finds himself on the brink of death. Like all the others, it is too crowded; the engine is broken; and the fuel is slowly running out. Authors and illustrator take readers back and forth through time, building suspense as Ebo's story of survival unfolds. The format allows sensitive and difficult topics such as murder, death, and horrific, traumatizing conditions to unfold for children, Ebo's reactions speaking volumes and dramatic perspectives giving a sense of scope. A creators' note provides factual context, and an appendix offers an Eritrean refugee's minimemoir in graphic form.Action-filled and engaging but considerate of both topic and audience, Ebo's story effectively paints a picture of a child refugee's struggle in a world crisscrossed by hostile borders. (Graphic fiction. 10-15) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
