Other Words for Home

"Other Words for Home is the story of Jude who lives in Syria . She has to leave and accompany her pregnant mother across to a new life in America with her mother’s brother who lives there with his family. Jude loves American movies, she talks too much, she asks too many questions, and she has a real zest and passion for life. She has always been told to be quiet, there’s this big thing about how she should be respectful and be seen and not heard. But she doesn’t observe any of that. She’s a really fun character to get behind. Navigating life in the United States as a Muslim is way more challenging for Jude than she expected it to be. She has to cope with the pressure of new labels as people start to make assumptions about her, where she’s come from and what she thinks. It’s almost like they’re trying to force her into all these different boxes. She’s never had to observe any of that before, she’s always just been Jude and been allowed to be who she is. She’s living under a constant cloud of worry because her father and brother have stayed in Syria where her brother is possibly part of the resistance and her father wouldn’t leave his shop. So while she’s very much there looking after Mum and preparing for the baby’s arrival, there’s a real fear that she’s never going to see her brother or her father again. She desperately wants to be happy in her new home but there is a sense of disloyalty as well, that she’s somehow betraying who she is and where she’s come from by settling in and adapting too well. Through it all, she’s embracing new challenges and making new friends. She gathers new family around her and gets involved in a school musical which you don’t see coming, it completely blindsides you. She’s fighting to be seen and to be loved and respected for the person that she’s becoming. The story is told in free verse and is incredibly hopeful. It explores really complicated themes like conflict and corruption, the idea of home and what that means to different people, and identity and how we define ourselves. Other Words for Home cuts right to the heart of the reality of life as an outsider and captures the acute honesty of somebody who feels that they don’t fit anywhere. It’s really thoughtful, and it’s funny. There’s so much humour and I think that is surprising in a novel that deals with such hard-hitting themes. It’s exceptionally brave. It challenged my ideas about Syria, about what home really is, and also about the experiences of people who are forced to leave everything they know. It’s very dramatic, and it’s lyrical. I think the author has written this novel in verse to try and capture the way that Arabic flows. I read a couple of interviews with her where she talks about the poetry of Arabic and the way that it sounds like music, and how she felt like this was going to be the way to catch that and pin it down. The verse format allows the reader to step right into Jude’s experiences so you feel her confusion and her loss and her courage, you are walking beside her through every page. This novel has been very highly acclaimed, and that’s very well deserved. It is a beautiful, beautiful book."

"Other Words for Home is a beautiful immigration story and it’s wonderfully written in free verse, which is very accessible to kids and is really becoming popular. The book explores themes of family and prejudice. We just felt that we hadn’t seen this story told in this way before, and it’s a very important story. The way she wrote, there are lines that just make you want to cry. But, at the end, she gets to find out what home truly means. I thought it was just very honest. Yes, so Jude and her mother have to flee from Syria for a new life in America. They have to live with Jude’s uncle and her cousin and we get a bit of the mean girl trope. But it turns out to be a misunderstanding on both sides. Her cousin wants to connect to that part of her heritage too. It just ends up a really great story about Jude’s resilience and learning from each other. It’s that anywhere can be home. Yes. We definitely would say that."