Skip to main content

"The Waiting Place"

Written by Dina Nayeri                Photographs by Anna Bosch Miralpeix
       
Image Source: Amazon
        Author, Dina Nayeri, is a a former refugee had some understanding when she went to the Katsikas refugee camp in Greece. Nayeri invited photographer Anna Bosch Miralpeix to document the children in "The Waiting Place". Nayeri spoke with the children and asked them about their lives in the camp and their hopes and dreams. These interviews show the both the hardships and the resilience of these children. 
        Nayeri interviews siblings Mobina (11) and Matin (5) about their roles as the older siblings. We meet several other children as they navigate the conflicts and joys of their friendships in the camp. Nayeri and Miralpeix also interview and photograph a family in camp A. Most of the children live in camp B as the newer arrivals to the camp. However, the people in camp A have been there a long time. The family living in A31 is still afraid that they will be found, so their names and faces were kept in confidence to be able to share their hardships as they cannot leave their shipping container home, even for school.
        The writing style is very narrative based and appropriate for children. However, the idea of a refugee camp would most likely be a very foreign concept to most children. It is organized as a story narrative as we meet the siblings and friends of the children in the Waiting Place. Every page includes one or two photographs to show the conditions these children are living in. Most of the spread is taken up by the pictures. While the pictures are full of the hope and joy of the children, they have a sense of fear and desperation of the conditions that these people are living in. The text is a small font to allow the pictures to take up most of the space but still in an easy to read typeface for the text to tell us their stories.
        There is a glossary in the back going over words that many children would not be familiar with, such as, asylum or Moria. There is an afterword as well, that Nayeri perfect describes the importance of this book: "I want luckier children to read about young refugees' battles with the Waiting Place...I want these lucky readers to know that somewhere, their own future neighbors and friends are fighting this battle." While this is a difficult concept for some children to understand, they need to see that they themselves are fortunate and not turn a blind eye to the other children that are not as fortunate.


Nayeri, Dina. The Waiting Place. Photographs by Anna Bosch Miralpeix. Candlewick Press, 2022. 59 pages. TR. $10.73, ISBN 978-1-5362-1362-1.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's get reading!

Welcome!  I will be using this blog to respond to and evaluate children's books for the LIS 721 Library Materials for Children class for Fall 2025. I really enjoyed and learned so much in the Materials for Young Adults class and hope to do the same in this class. Happy reading!
Post a Comment
Read more

"A Different Pond"

Written by Bao Phi                    Illustrated by Thi Bui Image Source: Amazon           The illustrations in "A Different Pond"  are almost all darker richer tones to depict the darkness of the hour that the Dad and the boy are up at. When there is light it is a deep yellow to show the warmth and comfort of their home, but also representing their lights without lamp shades to help diffuse the light in the house, as a lampshade is an extravagance for them. Thi does a wonderful job of using tones of blue and brown to shade the environment and shadows around the father and son that adds a beautiful depth to the images but also adds to the symbolism of the weight that the father feels everyday when he is fishing so that their family can eat.          The text in this book is appropriate for the children reading it and is a credible conversation. "A Different Pond" is a real...
Post a Comment
Read more

"A Little Like Magic"

Written and Illustrated by Sarah Kurpiel Image Source: readbrightly.com           The illustrations in "A Little Like Magic"  use a whimsical cool color scheme to help show the cold of the winter as they journey out in the cold. There are touches of warm colors when looking through windows into the warm house, as well as her toy horse to represent the warmth and comfort they bring. The full-page spreads that show the mother and child outside during the day use muted cool colors, while the full-page spreads at night use deeper, richer cool colors. Sarah does a wonderful job using lines to help show movement and the cold wind. The lines also help keep the eye moving throughout the spreads.          The text in this book is appropriate for the children reading it as it is simple and most of the language is vocabulary they would have heard before. Each page has one to three sentences. Repetition is used when the main character revi...
Post a Comment
Read more