Alpha

"It’s a much darker book – a very stark, grim book that pulls no punches. It isn’t easy or comfortable at all. There may be some children ready for this at ten years old but parents need to make that judgement. There are distressing images in the book. Children do have access to distressing information and images – found on the internet or in the news and the media – and this information is often just a glimpse with no explanation, no history, nothing linking it to real lives in a meaningful way. That is the worst way to come into contact with this type of information about the world. Here, although it’s not a comfortable read, you do see the story behind the distress, revealed as you follow Alpha’s journey and all the events taking place around him. It tells a devastating true story about many people’s journeys and the hardships they have to bear. “It has a dream-like quality which captures how surreal the refugee experience must be at times” I was at the Islington Centre last week. The people there were saying that they hadn’t made the boat journey but instead had made the desert journey. They explained that in the desert the journey was just as terrifying as at sea. To be left in the desert would mean certain death just as a capsizing boat would. They were as isolated in an ocean of sand as in an ocean of water. This story feels like so many people’s story. The terrible uncertainty of everything. Alpha’s wife and son have gone on ahead of him. There is no contact. This is so painfully beyond my understanding; I don’t know how people cope. The illustrations are very dramatic – pen and ink, very simple lines, simple splashes of colour. They effectively describe the boat journey. When someone falls over the side, it’s so quick, just a splash, and then they are gone. Part of me hesitated about putting this book on my list. It paints a very dark picture. It contains a bleak hope but it is so slim. Things don’t work out for Alpha. This is important to understand, too – in real life there aren’t always happy endings. And this is how things are for so many people. Yes, and there are lighter human stories. One of the characters wants to be a footballer, and on page 53 he is described maintaining his form in the face of unimaginable hardship. This is how he retains his hope for his future. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It also shows how war and conflict robs bright young things of their futures. How devastating it must be to have an education, to have such hopes and then to have them removed so forcibly. To have that taken away is so cruel."