
There are many reasons kids (and their parents) should read Refugee. First of all there is the sheer pleasure of getting lost in a well-constructed page turner. Every chapter ends with a cliff hanger. The interwoven narratives increase the tension. Alan Gratz leaves readers on the edge of a precipice and then they have to speed through the next two chapters before finding out whether one of the three protagonists lives or dies. The cultural and historical details are interesting, authentic, educational, and introduced without clumsy information dumps. (My daughter is studying abroad in Cuba this semester and I was tickled to see how many details of Cuban life that she has relayed to us were included in the book). But the main reason kids should read Alan Gratz’s book is that refugee crises are a children’s issue.