Program Description
About this event:
Community homeschoolers ages 9-13 are welcome to join this bi-monthly book club! In February we will be discussing the graphic novel When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. We will be joined by special guest Rayan Mohamed. Rayan is currently a film student at Syracuse University. Born during the Somali Civil War, at the age of four years old she and her family were forced to relocate to Ethiopia where they lived as refugees for the next seven years before receiving approval to move to the United States in 2015. This month we will meet virtually to accommodate our special guest's availability! Each participant will receive a copy of the selected award winning book to borrow and read in advance of our meeting. Registration is required as space is limited. Register online and reserve a copy of the book to keep. You will be notified when your copy is available to pick up by curbside or in lobby pickup.
Heartbreak and hope exist together in this remarkable novel about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl. Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future ... but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day. -From the Publisher
When Stars Are Scattered was a National Book Award Finalist in 2020. It is the winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award for young children and the Josette Frank Award. It received starred reviews from Booklist, The Horn Book, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.