Subhi is part of a group of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, once Burma. I’ll post links below the content section of this review. I know that’s a very polarizing idea right now, but I encourage you to look up more information. I’ve continued to read more about the people and their refugee status. The way the Rohingya people have been treated in these camps is unbelievable. What really left me speechless was the fact that the conditions Subhi and his family endure in the detention center are in fact based on real situations and reports. Bone Sparrow definitely deserves a place on the shelf with John Boyne’s acclaimed novel and others that shine a light on world issues, like Blue Gold by Elizabeth Stewart and Over a Thousand Hills I Walk With You by Hanna Jansen. Up until that point it felt like a solid, literary middle grade read, but the heaviness of that violence made me reconsider whether that’s really where the book belongs. The latter part of the tale shows some pretty intense violence. It reminded me very much of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and left me reeling much the same way that story did.

I immediately loved both Jimmie and Subhi and the colorful cast of characters in and out of the detention center. From the first page, the beautiful narrative sucked me in. As conditions worsen for both Jimmie and Subhi, each must find courage, as the characters from the songs and stories of their mothers did.īone Sparrow is one of those stories that will haunt you. Subhi shares the pages, filled with stories and songs as magical as the ones his mother once told.

She meets Subhi, and begs him to read her mother’s journal to her. She comforts herself with her mother’s necklace pendant, a sparrow carved from bone.

Up the hill from the center lives a girl named Jimmie who bears her own grief. Subhi has only known life within the fences of the permanent detention center. Every morning he shows the gifts to his mother, now barely responsive. Available NovemAmazon | Barnes & Noble | GoodreadsĮvery night, Subhi slips out of the compound in the refugee camp and finds the treasures he believes the magical Night Sea brings him from his far away father.

Bone sparrow the fraillon