Refugee Stories: Home

After the police come, a family is forced to flee their Caribbean island and set sail for America in a small fishing boat.

This is the journey of one boy who longs for a home, and we follow his path, walking hand in hand with him as he looks forward with uncertainty and hopes for a peaceful future. This beautiful, heartfelt story gives a human face to the plight of refugees all over the world. Marwan's journey is everyone's journey.

Separated from his family when they were forced to flee their home, a young East African boy named Deo lives alone in the Lukole refugee camp in Tanzania. With scarce resources at the camp, bullies have formed gangs to steal what they can, and a leader named Remy has begun targeting Deo. Then one day a coach gathers all the children to play soccer. Their shared joy in playing provides the children --- including Remy --- with a sense of belonging. Ball by ball, practice by practice, children who were once afraid of each other laugh together.

Stepping Stones tells the story of Rama and her family, who are forced to flee their once-peaceful village to escape the ravages of the civil war raging ever closer to their home. With only what they can carry on their backs, Rama and her mother, father, grandfather and brother, Sami, set out to walk to freedom in Europe.

With haunting echoes of the current refugee crisis this beautifully illustrated book explores the unimaginable decisions made as a family leave their home and everything they know to escape the turmoil and tragedy brought by war.

Having fled from war in their troubled homeland, a boy and his family are living in poverty in a strange country. Food is scarce, so when the boy's father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread never could.

A refugee seeking sanctuary from the horrors of Kristallnacht, Oskar arrives by ship in New York City with only a photograph and an address for an aunt he has never met. It is both the seventh day of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, 1938. As Oskar walks the length of Manhattan, from the Battery to his new home in the north of the city, he experiences the city's many holiday sights, and encounters its various residents. Each offers Oskar a small act of kindness, welcoming him to the city and helping him on his way to a new life in the new world.

Fleeing the Holocaust in Europe, Marcus moves with his family from Berlin to Shanghai. With help from his new friend Liang, Marcus sets out to build a unique sukkah in time for the harvest festival of Sukkot.

Lina is an Afghani girl living in a refugee camp. She finds a pair of sandals and agrees to share them with Feroza. When her father and sister are killed the family is allowed to relocate to America. Each girl keeps one sandal to remember their friendship.

Of all her friends, Abia has been at the Shimelba Refugee Camp the longest--seven years, four months, and sixteen days. Papa says that's too long and they need a forever home. But forever homes are in strange and faraway places--will she still be a queen?

A teacher helps one of her students, who is scarred from violence, see that she is spectacularly beautiful.

When a girl's family flees war-torn Vietnam, ants lead them through the moonlit jungle to the boat that will take them to safety. Before boarding, the girl folds a paper boat from a bun wrapper and drops it into the water, and the ants climb on. Their perilous journey, besieged by punishing weather, predatory birds, and dehydration, before reaching a new beginning, mirrors the family's own.

Like feathery seeds, a young girl and her mother take flight, putting down roots in an adopted country. Soon they blossom in their new home, strong and beautiful among hundreds of others just like them. The story is based on Huy's own childhood experience of moving to the US as a Cambodian refugee. The passing of the seasons, and the dandelion's growth from seed to shoot to blossom is a sunny, poignant metaphor for the resilience of immigrants and refugees.

A young immigrant girl joins her aunt and uncle in a new country that is unfamiliar to her. She struggles with loneliness, with a fierce longing for the culture and familiarity of home, until one day, her aunt takes her on a walk. As the duo strolls through their city park, the girl's aunt begins to tell her an old myth, and a story within the story begins.

A wordless story of one family's escape from Vietnam--a journey intertwined with an ant colony's parallel narrative. At her home in Vietnam, a girl rescues ants from the sugar water set out to trap them. Later, when the girl's family flees war-torn Vietnam, ants lead them through the moonlit jungle to the boat that will take them to safety. Before boarding, the girl folds a paper boat from a bun wrapper and drops it into the water, and the ants climb on. Their perilous journey, besieged by punishing weather, predatory birds, and dehydration, before reaching a new beginning, mirrors the family's own.

As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.

A young refugee girl flees Nazi Germany on a kindertransporte, taking Jewish children to safety in Britain, never to see her family again. Though lucky to be alive, Marianne is terribly lonely in her new home. She has to learn to speak English and she longs for her real family. This story will resonate with young people aware of the dire situation of refugees migrating through Europe today.

After Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, his family is forced to hire migrant Mexican workers to help save their Vermont farm from foreclosure. Tyler isn't sure what to make of these workers. Are they undocumented? And what about the three daughters, particularly Mari, the oldest? Can Tyler and Mari find a way to be friends despite their differences?

When two Mongolian brothers inexplicably appear one morning in Julie's sixth grade class, no one, least of all Julie, knows what to do with them. But when Chingis, the older of the two brothers, proclaims Julie as their "Good Guide" - a nomadic tradition of welcoming strangers to a new land - Julie must somehow navigate them through soccer, school uniforms, and British slang, all while trying to win Shocky's attention and perhaps also an invitation to her friend Mimi's house.

Set in 1981 Guatemala, a lyrical debut novel tells the powerful tale of a boy who must decide what it means to be a man during a time of war. Carlos knows that when the soldiers arrive with warnings about the Communist rebels, it is time to be a man and defend the village, keep everyone safe. But when the time comes, he must join a band of guerillas as they trek to the top of the mountain where Carlos's abuela lives. Will he be in time, and brave enough, to warn them about the soldiers? What will he do then?

Twelve-year-old Jaime is sitting on his bed drawing when he hears a scream. Instantly, he knows: Miguel, his cousin and best friend, is dead. Everyone in Jaime's small town in Guatemala knows someone who has been killed by the Alphas, a powerful gang that is known for violence and drug trafficking. Anyone who refuses to work for them is hurt or killed like Miguel. With Miguel gone, Jaime fears that he is next. There is only one choice: accompanied by his cousin Angela, Jaime must flee his home to live with his older brother in New Mexico.

When Julian's parents make the heartbreaking decision to send him and his two brothers away from Cuba to Miami via the Pedro Pan operation, the boys are thrust into a new world where bullies run rampant and it's not always clear how best to protect themselves.

Subhi is a refugee. He was born in an Australian permanent detention center after his mother and sister fled the violence of a distant homeland, and the center is the only world he knows. But every night, the faraway whales sing to him, the birds tell him their stories, and the magical Night Sea from his mother's stories brings him gifts. As Subhi grows, his imagination threatens to burst beyond the limits of the fences that contain him. Until one night, it seems to do just that. .

When Lily meets Albert, a refugee from Hungary, during the summer of 1944, they begin a special friendship. However, Lily and Albert have both told lies, and Lily has told a lie that may cost Albert his life.

A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours' walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay.

The Lleshis are Albanians living in Kosovo, a country trying to fight off Serbian oppressors, and suddenly they are homeless refugees. Old and young alike, they find their courage tested by hunger, illness, the long, arduous journey, and danger on every side. Then, unexpectedly, they are brought to America by a church group and begin a new life in a small Vermont town. The events of 9/11 bring more challenges for this Muslim family--but this country is their home now and there can be no turning back.

"Amira, look at me," Muma insists. She collects both my hands in hers. "The Janjaweed attack without warning. If ever they come -- run." Finally, Amira is twelve. Old enough to wear a toob , old enough for new responsibilities. And maybe old enough to go to school in Nyala -- Amira's one true dream. But life in her peaceful Sudanese village is shattered when the Janjaweed arrive. The terrifying attackers ravage the town and unleash unspeakable horrors. After she loses nearly everything, Amira needs to dig deep within herself to find the strength to make the long journey -- on foot -- to safety at a refugee camp. Her days are tough at the camp, until the gift of a simple red pencil opens her mind -- and all kinds of possibilities.

Two Jewish sisters from Vienna--12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellie--are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden. Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. She's happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who's as cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parents--and whether she will ever see them again.

Just down the road from their families, Deo and his friends play soccer in the dusty fields of Zimbabwe, cheered on by Deo's older brother, Innocent. It is a day like any other . . . until the soldiers arrive and Deo and Innocent are forced to run for their lives, fleeing the wreckage of their village for the distant promise of safe haven. Along the way, they face the prejudice and poverty that await refugees everywhere, and must rely on the kindness of people they meet to make it through. But when tragedy strikes, Deo's love of soccer is all he has left. Can he use that gift to find hope once more?

In 1938, eleven-year-old Esther joins her father in tropical, multicultural Cuba, where they toil together to rescue the rest of their Jewish family from persecution in Poland. Includes notes about the author's grandmother, on whom the story is based.

In Montréal, Canada, in 1942, the war in Europe seems far off to fifteen-year-old Rosetta Wolff until her family takes in Isaac, a war refugee, and everything changes.

Follow photographer Jenny Matthews into refugee camps, overcrowded cities, damaged villages, clinics, and support centers where children and their families live, work, play, learn, heal, and try to survive the devastating impact of war.

Michel Chikwanine was five years old when he was abducted from his school-yard soccer game in the Democratic Republic of Congo and forced to become a soldier for a brutal rebel militia. Against the odds, Michel managed to escape and find his way back to his family, but he was never the same again. After immigrating to Canada, Michel was encouraged by a teacher to share what happened to him in order to raise awareness about child soldiers around the world.

Tells how the author's family left difficult conditions in Poland to make a better life for themselves in America early in the twentieth century.

Tamba Hali and his seven siblings fled war-torn Liberia to the Ivory Coast during his youth. They later joined their father, a chemistry and physics professor, in New Jersey. There Tamba played both basketball and soccer, but he didn't discover football until a coach finally persuaded him to try out in high school. He earned an athletic scholarship to Pennsylvania State University with a coveted spot on their football team and then went on to play in the NFL . His drive, dedication, and athletic ability are inspiring.

A competitive swimmer in Syria, Yusra Mardini never let go of her Olympic dream, even when civil war made it too difficult to train in her country. She competed at the Rio Olympics on the special team for refugees. Today, Mardini still trains and also acts as a spokesperson and educator for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees.

In the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions and division of Poland, more than 1.5 million people were deported from their homes in Eastern Poland to remote parts of Russia. Those who made it out of Russia alive were lucky -- and nine-year-old Krystyna Mihulka, called Krysia, was among them. In this childhood memoir, Mihulka (now in her 80s) tells the story of her family's deportation, under cover of darkness and at gunpoint, by the Soviets, and their subsequent two years as prisoners on a Soviet communal farm in Kazakhstan.

In the 1800"s fourteen year old, Manjiro and four other fishermen were shipwrecked on an island 300 miles offshore. He was rescued by a whaling boat and brought to America, where he was educated. This true life adventure brings Manjiro back to Japan to become an honored samurai.