Review - Story Boat

Story Boat
by Kyo Maclear
illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh
Date: 2020
Publisher: Tundra Books
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 40
Format: e-book
Source: library

When you have to leave behind almost everything you know, where can you call home? Sometimes home is simply where we are: here. A imaginative, lyrical, unforgettable picture book about the migrant experience through a child's eyes.

When a little girl and her younger brother are forced along with their family to flee the home they've always known, they must learn to make a new home for themselves -- wherever they are. And sometimes the smallest things -- a cup, a blanket, a lamp, a flower, a story -- can become a port of hope in a terrible storm. As the refugees travel onward toward an uncertain future, they are buoyed up by their hopes, dreams and the stories they tell -- a story that will carry them perpetually forward.

This timely, sensitively told story, written by multiple award--winner Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Sendak Fellowship recipient Rashin Kheiriyeh, introduces very young readers in a gentle, non-frightening and ultimately hopeful way to the current refugee crisis.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Oh, dear. Here we go, publishing adult picture books again and trying to push them on kids.

The idea is fine. But the writing... No. It comes across as pretentious. It's clumsy. It's not clear. Couched in metaphor and pretty-sounding concepts, the words seem far too distanced from what they're trying to explain. If this is supposed to be a child's introduction to the refugee crisis, I'm afraid they're not going to be very enlightened:

Here is a cup.
Old and fine, warm as a hug.

Every morning,
As things keep changing,
We sit wherever we are
And sip, sip, sip,
Sippy, sip, sip
Ahhhh
From this cup.

And this cup is a home.

I do like the pictures. A very limited colour palette of blue, orange, brown, black, and white is striking and keeps the focus on the families depicted. There's an almost magic sort of quality to some of the pictures, especially those in which the children are imagining sailing in their teacup.

But I don't think this is a great introduction to the subject. Young children who know nothing about the refugee crisis probably aren't going to be able to parse out what's really going on from all these metaphors. Readers might want to try books like Roberto Aliaga's Fireflies (for younger children) or Margriet Ruurs's Stepping Stones (for older children) if they're looking for stories about refugees.

Premise: 3/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.5 out of 5