What does ‘Home’ mean to you? Is it your family, a place, a feeling? This month at Seven Stories, our #7StoriesSelect theme is ‘Our Home’.

Every year on June 20th, the world celebrates ‘World Refugee Day’, a day of recognition and honour for those forced to flee their homes. National Refugee Week, (June 17th – June 23rd) is a time to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions made by refugees in the UK and to foster a greater understanding of the challenges refugees face when seeking sanctuary.

This month, our books have been carefully selected to explore the refugee experience from all angles, whether you’re reading about a young boy wanting to befriend The Boy at the Back of the Class, or a child sacrificing her most prized possession to help someone in need. Our selection contains stories of love, sacrifice, grief and family, questioning whether home is geographical or a place of belonging.

Lubna and Pebble by Wendy Maddour

Picture Book Choice

Lubna’s best friend is a pebble. Lubna tells Pebble everything. About home. About her brothers. About the war. Pebble always listens to her stories and smiles when she feels afraid. But when a lost little boy arrives in the World of Tents, Lubna understands that he needs Pebble even more than she does . . .

This emotionally stirring and stunningly illustrated picture book explores one girl’s powerful act of friendship in the midst of an unknown situation.

Homeland: My Father Dream’s of Palestine by Hannah Moushabeck

Five & Over

As bedtime approaches, three young girls eagerly await the return of their father, who tells them stories of a faraway homeland – of Palestine.

Through their father’s memories, the old city of Jerusalem comes to life: the sound of juice vendors beating rhythms with brass cups, the smell of argileh drifting through windows, and the sight of doves flapping their wings towards home.

These daughters of the diaspora feel love for a place they have never been, a home they cannot visit. But, as their father’s story comes to an end, they know that through his memories, they will always return.

Safiyyah’s War by Hiba Noor Khan

Middle Grade

War comes to the streets of Paris and Safiyyah’s life changes forever. Her best friend’s family have fled, and the bombing makes her afraid to leave the mosque where she lives.

But when the Nazis arrest her father for his secret Resistance work, it falls to Safiyyah to run the dangerous errands around the city. It’s not long before hundreds of persecuted Jews seek sanctuary at the mosque.

Can Safiyyah find the courage to enter the treacherous catacombs under Paris and lead the Jews to safety?

The Crossing by Manjeet Mann

YA Fave

Natalie’s world is falling apart.  She’s just lost her mum, and her brother marches the streets of Dover with a far-right gang.  Swimming is her only refuge.

Sammy has fled his home and family in Eritrea for the chance of a new life in Europe.  Every step he takes is a step into an unknown and unwelcoming future.

A twist of fate brings them together and gives them both hope.

But is hope enough to mend a broken world?

The Carpet: An Afghan Family Story by Dezh Azad

All The Family

“The carpet is for dreaming of a place that I have never known,

the distant land we call our own.”

Follow a day in the life of an Afghan refugee child, where every moment revolves around the carpet that connects her family to home. The carpet is the centrepiece of family life, where meals, stories, laughs, and memories are shared. This moving story, inspired by author Dezh Azaad’s life, celebrates what makes a home – no matter where you are.

The Shape of Home by Rashin Kheiriyeh

Story Seller Recommendation

It’s Rashin’s first day of school in America! Everything is a different shape than what she’s used to: from the foods on her breakfast plate to the letters in the books! And the kids’ families are from all over!

The new teacher asks each child to imagine the shape of home on a map. Rashin knows right away what she’ll say: Iran looks like a cat!

What will the other kids say? What about the country YOUR family is originally from? Is it shaped like an apple? A boot? A torch?

Join Rashin in discovering the true things that shape a place called home.

Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah

Classic

Life is not safe for Alem. His father is Ethopian, his mother Eritrean. Their countries are at war, and Alem is welcome in neither place.

So Alem is excited to spend a holiday in London with his father – until he wakes up to find him gone. What seems like a betrayal is in fact an act of love, but now Alem is alone in a strange country, and he must forge his own path…

Acclaimed performance poet and novelist Benjamin Zephaniah’s honest, wry and poignant story of a young refugee left in London is of even more power and pertinence today than when it was first published.

We’re immensely proud to house the work of Eva Ibbotson, John Agard, Judith Kerr and more in our Collection. You can explore these and more at sevenstories.online and engage with their stories of hope away from home.

You can learn more about World Refugee Day and Refugee Week via worldrefugee.org