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2018 Nominee

Stormy Seas: Stories of Young Boat Refugees

Written by Mary Beth Leatherdale and Eleanor Shakespeare.
Published in 2017 by Annick Press.

The phenomenon of desperate refugees risking their lives to reach safety is not new. For hundreds of years, people have left behind family, friends, and all they know in hope of a better life. This book presents five true stories about young people who lived through the harrowing experience of setting sail in search of asylum: Ruth and her family board the St. Louis to escape Nazism; Phu sets out alone from war-torn Vietnam; José tries to reach the U.S. from Cuba; Najeeba flees Afghanistan and the Taliban; Mohamed, an orphan, runs from his village on the Ivory Coast. Aimed at middle-grade students, Stormy Seas combines a contemporary collage-based design, sidebars, fact boxes, timeline and further reading to produce a book that is ideal for both reading and research. Readers will gain new insights into a situation that has constantly been making the headlines.

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6 thoughts on “Stormy Seas: Stories of Young Boat Refugees

  1. Hillhurst

    RMBA Book Review
    Katia
    Stormy Seas

    This book’s message to the reader really portrays the “refugee” theme. There are several stories of immigrants of war to different countries. All of them are smuggled to their destination by boat, and that points to the name: Stormy Seas. The five refugee stories in this book show how one child can go a long way to tell their story.

    My thesis for this book is that all students that are being bullied should read this book. The refugees face a similar sort of neglect because they are being rejected when they try to escape from the cause of their ascent. This book also provides valuable information and achieves its purpose with the five stories all clearly related to the topic.

    Stormy Seas makes a great discussion topic for readers willing to share any information and helps them know what it it is like to be one of the children in their stories. With the collage-themed style and handwriting quotes, this book entertains people a lot. Although it is sort of inferior to kinds of other stories that kids like to read, it is superior to them by having facts and real-life issues that kids just might face someday. Stormy Seas is a good book because it has almost all of the facts of a refugee’s life.

    I recommend this book to people of all ages because it can entertain them while teaching them more about the world. To me, this book is a new opportunity to learn about people from different perspectives and the world around us.

  2. Grande Cache Municipal Library and Sonrise Christian School

    I thought it was really familiar . It relates to what goes on in the world how there are wars going on. How people our forced to leave there homes but life is life is like that.

  3. Anonymous

    I think that stormy seas is more of a war book but I am a war guy so I like it. I Like because it tells you about the history and the Nazi party or other wars


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