along comes Jasmine Warga with 'Other Words for Home,' and she gives us Jude's story, and it is everything I wanted.Īnd along comes Jasmine Warga with Other Words for Home, and she gives us Jude's story, and it is everything I wanted. Give me a story that will revel in a nuanced understanding of what is home a story that gives us permission to search for it even when the proverbial They tell us we should already know our place and that's it, you only get the one. Give me a story that tells us it's okay to be more than one thing, that two different places don't exist in competition that you can love them both and it isn't a betrayal of one. No, if I were the questing type and I had my chance to demand things from the sky, I might say: Give me a story about the ways in which people are kind to one another the ways in which a community leans into kindness even while some people within it are sharp and cruel and fearful.
Nor would I expect that book to be a deceptively easy-to-read middle grade novel, where reading just one more - maybe two more - okay, three, four, five - I guess I'm just reading now - sections is all too tempting. I wouldn't expect that book to be a verse novel of remarkable sensitivity.
If I were the questing type, the type who might travel to the peak of a very high mountain and demand things of the sky, I might demand a certain kind of book. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. This lyrical, life-affirming story is about losing and finding home and, most importantly, finding yourself.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Other Words for Home Author Jasmine Warga Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is. The American movies that Jude has always loved haven’t quite prepared her for starting school in the US-and her new label of “Middle Eastern,” an identity she’s never known before.īut this life also brings unexpected surprises-there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude might just try out for. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives.Īt first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. Jude never thought she’d be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. New York Times bestseller and Newbery Honor Book!Ī gorgeously written, hopeful middle grade novel in verse about a young girl who must leave Syria to move to the United States, perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds and Aisha Saeed.
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