By Margriet Ruurs
A Syrian family walks out of a war and across a sea to Europe, told in artwork made entirely of small stones gathered from a Syrian beach.
Rama's village in Syria is peaceful until the war creeps closer, and one by one the families leave. Then it's Rama's turn: with Mama, Papa, her grandfather Jedo, and her brother Sami, she walks out carrying only what fits on her back, joining a river of people leaving the bombs behind. They walk to the sea, cross it packed into a small boat, and walk again, until at last a village far from the war welcomes them in. The astonishing thing is how it's told. Every picture is built from stones that the Syrian artist Nizar Ali Badr gathered on the beach near his home and arranged into figures, and the words run in both English and Arabic.
The stone artwork is the reason to reach for this one, and it changes how the hard subject lands. Badr composes whole families out of pebbles, with no faces, and that stillness lets the book be honest about a dangerous journey while holding it at a contemplative distance a child can bear. The story itself is spare, almost a poem, walking the family out of a bombed village and across the sea to a welcome. It pairs beautifully with the artist's own story, a man in Syria making art from the beach at his feet, and the English and Arabic side by side make it a warm read for an Arabic-speaking family. For a child ready to understand where refugees come from, this is a quiet, unusual way to show it.