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The Bone Sparrow is a Powerful Tale of Survival and Hope
The Bone Sparrow, by Australian author Zana Fraillon, is an eye-opening, moving book about how stories can help make life worth living, even in the saddest of circumstances. Ten year old Subhi was born in a permanent detention facility in Australia. He and his family are Muslim refugees from Myanmar, but their hopeful journey from persecution brought his mother and older sister to a place that is basically a prison. And there, behind the fences, Subhi was born, and the only world he’s ever know is one of inedible food, appalling sanitation, casual brutality from the guards, and the pain of not knowing his father.
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Subhi has been sustained by stories gathered from the adults around him. And there are friendships too; one of the guards has been kind to him, and his best friend Eli, with a heartbreakingly tragic past of his own, is a fighter who will not let hope die even when he’s transferred, though still a kid, to the adult section of the compound. But now Subhi’s mother is slipping into depressed withdrawal, beloved elders are dying, his sister is getting angrier and bossier, and without Eli to be his ally, Subhi is a target of bullies trapped together with him in the barren, hot space inside the fence.
Outside the fence, a girl named Jimmie is dealing with her own grief for her mother, and her loneliness as she copes as best she can with her father’s long absences for his work. She’s left to the uncertain care of her big brother, who loves her but can’t be counted on to be there for her. One night she sneaks away to visit the compound she’s heard about, and chance brings her and Subhi together. Their shared love of stories cements their friendship; Jimmie has a book of her mother’s she cannot read, so Subhi reads it for her. And the tale that unfolds brings them brief freedom from the sadness of the world, and it also brings bravery, and the possibility that hope is not a waste of time.
The Bone Sparrow is not easy reading. It brings a tragic and horrible situation vividly to life, but it is not so focused on the grim as to be unbearable for young readers. The lyrical writing and the small touches of almost magic that brighten Subhi’s life, and his friendship with Jimmie, make it possible to imagine that he and his family will somehow be ok. So though sobering, and almost certainly distressing for the empathetic reader, it is not so dark as to kill all hope. Subhi is a young hero to hold in one’s heart, and his dreams are an inspiration.
If you have a kid who enjoys dystopian books, whose reading scope you want to broaden, this would be a good choice; the situation inside the refugee impoundment is dystopian as all get out, and the theme of the young hero surviving under oppression while keeping dreams alive, which is common in many dystopian books, is right here too, in real life.
The Bone Sparrow is on B&N bookshelves now.