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When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed, and Iman Geddy
Dial Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House
Published: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 9780525553908
Fleeing their war-torn home of Somalia, brothers Omar and Hassan live in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Omar has almost no memories of life before the camp and his mother, who he still desperately searches for in the faces of new refugees. Taking care of Hassan is his full-time job, but Omar dreams of going to school and making a new life for himself and his brother.
When survival is your priority, is there room for dreams too?
The lives of refugees around the world are so important for teens to know about, and graphic novels are the perfect medium to tell these personal stories of survival. There are pages in this book that will make you gasp with the immensity of Omar’s situation and others’ lives made so vividly real. This story will resonate with young people everywhere. Readers of hard-hitting books like Illegal by Eoin Colfer and The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown will appreciate this title as well.
—Tina Lernø
