Friday, November 12, 2021

Where Butterflies Fill the Sky (Picture Book)

 


Publication date: February 8, 2022 (post released early in celebration of Picture Book month)

My Thoughts:

Author Zahra Marwan shares the story of her family, and how with a stateless father, she and her family had to say goodbye to the desert of Kuwait to travel to the deserts of New Mexico.  Leaving a close knit family is sad for her, but she finds that like the deserts of Kuwait, New Mexico also brings magic. 

Peritextual features of books include information on dust jackets, end papers, title pages, etc. The value of this picture book in the secondary classroom is that it tells a historical story of immigration that is not as familiar to students. Teachers can enhance literacy engagement using the Peritextual Literacy Framework (PLF) developed by Gross and Latham (2017) my mining the rich information found in the "The Story of My Family" section and "About the Art."

From the Publisher:

Zahra lives in a beautiful place where the desert reaches all the way to the sea and one hundred butterflies always fill the sky. When Baba and Mama tell her that their family is no longer welcome here and they must leave, Zahra wonders if she will ever feel at home again--and what about the people she will leave behind? But when she and her family arrive in a new desert, she's surprised to find magic all around her. Home might not be as far away as she thought it would be.

With spare, moving text and vivid artwork, Zahra Marwan tells the true story of her and her family's immigration from Kuwait, where they were considered stateless, to New Mexico, where together they made a new home.

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