Diverse Books Review Series- Wishes + Wherever I Go
A very special thanks to I’m Your Neighbor Books for making these texts available for review.
Looking for ways to incorporate diverse books into your library or classroom programming?
Visit https://imyourneighborbooks.org/ for valuable tools, resources, projects, and book searches.
While you’re there, be sure to check out The Welcoming Library, a pop-up community conversation on immigration.
Title: Wishes
by Mu’o’n Thi Van & Victo Ngai
Empathy is a pillar of social-emotional learning. And it’s more important now than at any other time in our collective history. Wishes, by Mu’o’on Thi Van is an experience in empathy and human connectedness from its first page to its last.
This powerful early reader grabs you in its first moments. Victor Ngai’s beautifully rich illustrations wrap the text in a blanket of emotional imagery.
The night wished it was quieter. The bag wished it was deeper.
The story illuminates the realities of human migration as it takes readers along a path of goodbyes, uncertainties, and ultimately, hope. The writing takes on the lens of various elements along the journey- the path that wished it was shorter, the boat that wished it was bigger, the heart that wished it was stronger.
Incredibly, Mu’o’on Thi Van makes tough content digestible for young readers, but that also leaves space for open-ended questions, critical text connections, and constructive upper-grade conversations.
I can simultaneously imagine this book as a first-grade read-aloud, as part of a second-grade lesson on personification, as the bones for a fourth-grade art study, as a middle school drama reconstruction, and as the foundation for a high school essay. And I’m definitely purchasing a copy for our children’s bookshelf at home.
Through its meticulously detailed artwork and profoundly simple text, Wishes is a very natural practice in empathy. It unassumingly invites readers to exercise muscles of understanding, connection, and inclusivity. For many young folks, I expect that it will also light a fire of curiosity, if not deliberate activism.
If you’re searching for a text that dives into the refugee experience while maintaining a lens on the human story, Wishes should be a first pick.
Title: Wherever I Go
by Mary Wagley Copp & Munir D. Mohammed
Wherever I Go is the anthem of young Abia, a queen by all accounts. Abia’s entire youth has occurred within the Shimelba refugee camp. However, this fact has nothing on the girl’s spirit.
Wherever I Go shines a light on what life in a refugee camp can be like. But despite glimpses of daily hardships- pumping and carrying water, of waiting in long lines for rice and oil, of caring for younger siblings- this isn’t a story of defeat. Indeed, Copp and Mohammed offer up characters full of dignity, strength, bravery, and optimism.
Munir Mohammed is a perfect fit for this book. His vibrantly colored full-page illustrations make me feel like I’m sitting across the mat from Abia’s parents myself, like Abia’s father, in particular, is someone I’ve known already. Simply stunning.
Eventually, the family prepares for their turn to come up for resettlement. And when we go, we’ll leave our belongings here- for others. That’s what Papa says. “Everything,” he adds. Mama says we’ll have our stories, though, wherever we go.
The book closes with Abia settled into her new life, somewhere on the other side of the ocean. At this point, however, the reader knows that with a spirit as tenacious as Abia’s, this queen’s story is far from over.
Copp and Mohammed invite readers to consider the main character’s pre and post-resettlement identity and do so in a way that is culturally affirmative. This lens highlights those threads that link both worlds- family, hope, perseverance, and the idea of home.
If you’re considering having students consider their own stories and what they take with them wherever they go, I can’t imagine a better starting point.
