Refugee Boy

Benjamin Zephaniah's Refugee Boy is a powerful story for 11 year olds about a boy who comes to England for a holiday and wakes up alone.

What happens

Alem is fourteen. His dad is Ethiopian and his mum is Eritrean, and the two countries are at war with each other. He's never left Africa before. So when they land at Heathrow on a grey October day, everything is exciting (even the taxi).

They see all the London sights. They eat spaghetti in Covent Garden and argue happily about whether it's really Italian. Then one morning Alem opens his eyes in the hotel room and his father has gone.

There's a letter. His parents have decided he'll be safer here. It's heartbreaking, and Alem handles it in the quietest way. He even peeps into other hotel rooms in case it's all some kind of test.

What makes it so readable is Alem himself. He notices everything. He's puzzled by gravy and by "meat and two veg". He wants to be an architect and keeps redesigning London in his head. His English is careful and polite, and his father corrects it right up to the last night ("burnt", not "burned").

It's worth saying clearly that this is at the top of the shelf. Early on, Alem tells two workers from the Refugee Council why his family had to run. Police broke down their door and hit his father with a rifle. A gang of much older boys beat him and kept kicking him on the ground. It's told simply, in his own words, but it's hard to read.

So a younger or more sensitive child might need a grown-up close by. For a reader who's ready, it's a real eye-opener. They'll see what it's like to be the new kid in a children's home with eighty-six other boys, filling in forms that decide whether you're allowed to stay.

If your reader asks big questions about the news, this one gives them a face and a name. Who hasn't wondered how they'd cope somewhere completely new?

What to read next

If Alem gets under their skin, A House Without Walls is another story of a child forced to leave home in a hurry. Safiya is twelve and Syrian, and she has plenty to say about it.