The Bone Sparrow: Zana Fraillon

A beautifully written serious but accessible book for young adults- though my wife and I both read the novel having had it recommended by our 12 year old. Moving, evocative, sensitively handling one of the key issues of our times. Recommended

Thought provoking book - highly recommend!

A moving story. Very relevant with today's movement of people. Certainly made me think ( and ashamed) about the lack of humanity when a whole group of people is unwanted by all nations. Fraillon has captured the fragility of life through the eyes of one young boy, Subhi, who is born imprisoned within the camp and his touching relationship with Jimmie, a young girl grieving the death of her mother.Beautifully written. It is supposed to be a children's novel but some of the anger and brutality was disturbing to read. Probably suit an older teenager.

An amazing book that will last with me for a long time. I read it to my daughter aged 11, it was recommended by her school. It was the saddest and most shocking thing she's read so far, but it's an amazing book for understanding what refugees have to go through.

Anyone who doubts the value of stories needs to stop right here and read this book. This is a story with a purpose - a story which exposes the shameful way in which the world treats people forced to flee for their lives. It gives a voice, long denied, to the much-persecuted Rohingya people.It is also a story which self-references the power of stories. The hero, Subhi, is guided and grounded by the stories he hears. They wind their way through his short life, helping him to deal with the awful facts of his past and his present.If you read only one book this summer, make it this one, because this is a book that needs to be read. For the sake of our humanity.

As a Chatterbooks leader at the local library, this book was included in a list of books to read on the theme of ‘stories from around the world’. It’s one of the best books I have read about refugees as it is about a group of refugees, forgotten, invisible people I haven’t heard much about, the Rohingya people of Burma, told through the eyes of Subhi, who was born in a refugee camp, where he lives with his Maa, sister Queeny, his friend Eli and a kindly jacket called Harvey. He knows no other life until he meets Jimmie, an Australian girl who lives outside the camp. In a story of deprivation, struggle and survival, a touch of humour is added through the Shakespeare duck and jokes the characters tell each other. A tragic story, told with expertise and humanity.

👍🏼

The Bone Sparrow is a children’s book that I read because our 13yo is studying it at school. It is an Australian novel telling the story of Subhi, a child still living in the refugee detention camp near Darwin in which he was born. Subhi imagines a night sea, washing up fish and debris; he hangs with Ali, a bit of a wise guy looking to trade between camp residents; he talks to a Shakespeare rubber duck; and is visited by Jimmie, one of the local girls.The novel is issues led. The main issue, of course, is whether it can be right for children (and adults) to end up in jail for years on end because they tried to migrate to Australia. On the one hand, readers will want the cases to be processed as quickly as possible to get kids out of such a toxic environment; on the other, as Subhi points out, nobody wants to be sent back to where they came from. But at least in asking the question – if not finding the answer – readers may see Subhi and others in his situation as people rather than “illegals”. This is helped by the compare and contrast friendship with Jimmie, and his willingness to accept one of the camp guards, Harvey, as a father figure in the absence of his own father.As a children’s book, perhaps some of the characters are not as complex as those in adult novels. Perhaps Jimmie is a little too convenient. Perhaps the two guards are rather horns and halo. Perhaps Subhi is just a little bit too educated for a small child denied the most basic learning resources. But Bone Sparrow is a damn sight better than some of the rival products imposed on our Year 7s. Destroying Avalon, anyone?