Friday, January 25, 2013

Review: A Rose in the Destert

Title: A Rose in the Desert
Author: Chi Emerole
Grade: B


Review
The first thing that struck me about this book was the absolutely gorgeous illustrations. Ryan Durney creates beautiful pictures of the landscape of Sudan, which are almost lifelike,. The story is about Rose's 7th birthday is a refugee camp in Sudan. It goes through her entire day and talks about the special parts of her birthday. It also provides a view of a child growing up as a refugee, which I believe is a very  hard topic to portray in a positive light. Emerole was very successful in doing that.

I actually had a bit of a hard time following the contentedness of the plot. Although there was an underlying back story to the entire book, I didn't feel as if all of the events were connected  The book seemed to jump from Rose's home, to school, to band practice with her friends, etc... I think children may have a hard time understanding the purpose of the book. Is it to talk about a child's birthday, or is it to talk about life as a refugee?  Overall I gave this book a B because although it was a little hard to follow, the illustrations were absolutely gorgeous. You can read more about A Rose in the Desert and Chi Emerole on her website.

Happy reading!
Bookaholic


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