Theresa Breslin's Divided City: Mixing the Colours

It's over ten years since Theresa Breslin's Divided City came out, and I can't believe I haven't read it before now. I borrowed it recently from the Mixing the Colours collection (part of a project in which women speak about intra-Christian sectarianism) at Glasgow Women's Library. I meant to review it for their website, but stupidly didn't check if it had been done already. It had, so I'm posting my review here instead.

Theresa Breslin’s Divided City explodes onto the page. A boy is walking down a street in a part of Glasgow he knows isn’t safe. Footsteps sound behind him – and then there's a stabbing. The boy, Graham, a Rangers supporting football fanatic, stops to help the young man who has been injured - Kyoul, an asylum seeker - and the story takes off from here.

Next we meet Joe. He and Graham have just been at the same football practice and they played really well together. The coach is hoping to set up a team drawn from all Glasgow schools, and these two seem a certainty. But Joe is a Celtic supporter – can he and Graham be friends? It’s not just a matter of football teams, it’s religion too – Joe is from a Catholic family; Graham is a Protestant whose Grandfather is hoping to persuade him to take part in the next Orange Walk.

Breslin draws the relationship between the two boys well, with its contrast of conflict and co-operation. Neither boy can be honest with his family about his new friend, and yet it is Joe whom Graham trusts to help him get a message to Kyoul’s girlfriend. After the exciting beginning I found this part of the plot unconvincing, but I can see that Kyoul was there to show that the boys are not intolerant or fearful of “the other” – apart from the blind spot that growing up with sectarianism has given them. I like that this is not completely resolved by the end of the book – it wouldn’t be in real life – but that we are left with a sense of hope that initiatives such as the all-Glasgow football team will start to build bridges.

Theresa, a former librarian, is a great supporter of libraries and is currently Vice-President of CILIPS (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). For more about her, there are many interviews and articles out there: the most recent one I've read is from the always entertaining Bookwitch. For more on Divided City, see its section on Theresa's webpage.

Other books for young people on the Mixing the Colours list include Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses series, Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie books, the Breadwinner trilogy by Deborah Ellis and Tribes by Cathy MacPhail.

On feet and two wings

Abbas Kazerooni On two feet and wings (Allen & Unwin).

Set during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, On feet and two wings tells the story of an Iranian boy, Abbas, who is soon to be 10 and therefore, unbelievably, eligible for call up to the army. Abbas' parents decide that he and his mother will try to escape via Istanbul to England, but at the last minute his mother is not allowed to board the plane and Abbas travels to Turkey on his own. Remember, as you read on, this is not fiction, this is a memoir. Kazerooni says:

"The book is based on real events that happened to me a long time ago when I was a child. To write it for you I have simplified some events and changed some details."

Abbas arrives in Istanbul, where he doesn't speak the language or understand the system, and has to fend for himself for 12 weeks while he tries to get a visa for the UK. I'm not sure I would like to do that now, never mind as a nine year old. Obviously Abbas has a lot to learn, not least how to judge character and who to trust. In general, the kindness of strangers is greater than that of the few contacts his father has managed to make for him. For example, the man who was to meet him at the airport and help him abandons him almost immediately. Fortunately, he finds a taxi driver with more integrity who helps him to find a cheap hotel where Persian is spoken.

Abbas manages to find his way around the city, change money on the black market (his father has given him a supply of dollars), persuade someone to translate for him at the British Consulate - and also make a living! His best friend is Murat, the hotel owner, whom he talks into giving him work serving drinks and shining shoes. Murat also teaches him backgammon, at which he proves to be a natural, and they make a lot of money taking bets on his performance. Not all is plain sailing though. A less attractive job is delivering packages for the jeweller who changes his money - what is in them is never disclosed, but the job earns him his first beating - and, at heart, Abbas remains a small boy who cries himself to sleep because he misses his mother.

There are traumatic scenes in the book, but it's not unhappy overall. The story zips along, and you really root for the resourceful Abbas who is far more cheerful than many would be in his situation. Also, because we know the adult Abbas is writing the story in real life, we don't need to worry about him surviving. However, as well as being a good story, I think the book would help a lot of children to understand issues of immigration, asylum and persecution. Unaccompanied child refugees still arrive in this country today, so anything that encourages empathy and challenges the dangerous rhetoric preached by such as the Daily Mail and Ukip is to be welcomed.

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for sending me this book, which I won in a draw. I will now be donating it to the University of Strathclyde for its Teaching Practice collection and, I hope, addition to its Refugees booklist.

Journeys from images to words: picture books in multilingual classrooms

An article in last week's TES, Pictures really do tell a thousand words, alerted me to this interesting research from Glasgow University. Sub-headed "Glasgow researchers find that images can build language skills", it sounds a bit obvious at first. However, there's more to Journeys - from images to words and back again than the heading implies. Working with classes which included refugees and asylum seekers as well as native English speakers, the researchers were looking for a way to help the children with poor English. However, they discovered that picture books were also of benefit to those whose first language was English, even advanced readers (the classes were P6, so were aged around 10).  They started with completely wordless books and moved progressively to books with no illustrations. Work included putting picture books into words and creating artwork to illustrate text. The research found that these visual strategies “provided a level playing field for all students because there were no expectations about success or failure based on the traditional reading and writing skills”. Find out more at the links above, and see the books used below.

The rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan. This is a story which represents an allegory of colonisation using images and minimal text.

 

Gervelie's journey: a refugee diary by Anthony Robinson and Annemarie Young, illustrated by June Allan. This is a non-fiction book with text illustrated by line drawings and photographs. It's part of a series in which the authors wanted to allow children to "put their feet in the shoes" of others.

 

Boy overboard by Morris Gleitzman. A chapter book consisting entirely of words, this tells the story of two children who journey from Afghanistan to Australia.

 

 

 

Update 26/08/13

 Since posting the above, I've come across a blog post by Trevor Cairney at  Literacy, families and learning which is relevant to the idea that pictures can help improve literacy. See "How drawing can improve reading comprehension."



Looking back at Refugee Week: books for children

Lajee Dancers in Glasgow

Last week was Refugee Week. In Scotland, it kicked of with a photo-call of a few of the acts performing throughout the week, including these talented young dancers who live in a refugee camp in Palestine. Aida Camp is crowded and insecure - how do you explain to children the sorts of lives these young people are living?

Step forward the amazing Zoe Toft who writes the award-winning blog Playing by the Book. All through Refugee Week she featured children's books about refugees. For example she both reviewed Azzi in between, about a young girl arriving in this country, and interviewed its author, Sarah Garland. She wrote about fiction for kids to make them think about life as a refugee and listed over 75 books about the refugee experience. Finally, she posted about 17 authors and illustrators who were themselves refugees, including famous names such as Judith Kerr and Eva Ibbotson.

Zoe's posts are often accompanied by suggestions for activities, written for her own children but adaptable for the classroom. Books about refugees are not just for Refugee Week - use them at any time to encourage children to empathise and learn to combat negative attitudes in society.

Children's books and social justice: refugees and other stories

With Refugee Week Scotland coming up soon, it's great to report that the inaugural Little Rebels Children's Book Award, run by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, has been won by a powerful refugee story. Azzi in between, by Sarah Garland, tells, in graphic format, of the frightening journey undertaken by Azzi and her parents, who have to leave their home because it is too dangerous to stay in their own country. Azzi is sad because she had to leave her beloved grandmother behind and because she can't speak the language of her new country. However, Garland shows how kindness and friendship can overcome feelings of difference, and there is a happy ending involving both the arrival of Grandma and a bag of beans! It's not hard to find books with empathetic portrayals of refugees for older children and teens, so it's good to see one for the younger market. For more information about the book and the prize, see the Federation of Children's Book Groups site.

Zoe Toft, of the excellent Playing by the Book blog, has been compiling a list of other books exploring the refugee experience. It's too long to reproduce here (and as yet, there is no online link) but she does point to some other online resources, notably Refugee Week's list of resources for children and the following bibliography:

Collecting Children's Refugee Literature: A Bibliography by Elisa Mason
March 2009; links checked September 2010

Closer to home, don't forget the children's booklist, Refugees, from the University of Strathclyde

Finally, another prize dedicated to social justice and equality issues is the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children's Book Award, which has just announced its winner for 2013, and there is a new(ish) blog Ink & Pen with the tagline "Thoughts on diversity in YA and children's literature".

Beverley Naidoo at Yarls Wood Immigration Centre

Author Beverley Naidoo, who herself first came to the UK seeking refuge, is moved and saddened by the plight of children she meets detained in a UK immigration centre. In this Guardian article, she describes her visit to the centre to do a storytelling session with Karin Littlewood, the illustrator with whom she wrote a picture book, Baba's Gift.