I was in charge of buying new books to restock our classroom libraries this summer, and it was a lot of fun. I don’t normally buy a lot of books, so this was like getting to go on a book-buying spree for my kids.
One of the books I ordered for school was “When Stars are Scattered.” I didn’t know much about it, but it looked interesting, so I read it when it arrived. It’s a young adult graphic novel about two brothers who are Somali refugees.
The first time I can remember hearing much about refugees was in 2015 – I remember seeing news articles about refugees from Syria going to Lebanon, and trying to get asylum in Europe and the United States. Obviously people have been refugees for much longer than that, but that was the first time it hit my very American-centered news radar. In reading “When Stars are Scattered” I realized that I had never actually read a book about refugees at all before. There are 25.4 million refugees worldwide, which is more people than live in Florida, and about eight and a half times as many people as live in Mississippi. It’s a pretty significant blind spot in my learning.
“When Stars are Scattered” follows Omar and his brother, Hassan, through their lives growing up in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. They’re from Somalia, but had to flee when they were young. In fleeing, they were separated from their parents. Hassan is non-verbal and has a disability, and Omar spends a lot of his time caring for Hassan. Through the course of the book, Omar begins going to school in the refugee camp. He’s successful in school, and he’s able to go to high school in the refugee camp. He and his brother then go through the drawn-out process of interviewing with the UN to be resettled, and eventually, they find that they’ll be resettled in the United States.
I liked this book – I think it would be a good introduction for young people to learn about what life is like for people who live in refugee camps, and the different challenges they face.