I am a 4th / 5th grade reading teacher, and I think this would be a great book for my students to read to gain a window into a world of which they are very unfamiliar. Warga, the daughter of a Jordanian father, says she “wrote Jude for my twelve-year-old self, who never saw a brown girl in a book who was proud of her family and where she came from.” Lots of girls-and adults-should be grateful she did. Beautiful inside and out I read this book in a couple of days. “I am learning how it tastes - / sweet with promise / and bitter with responsibility.” I am learning how to say it / over and over again in English,” Warga writes. Jude discovers new friends, an expanded family, and unexpected surprises in a school musical that she bravely auditions for. Mostly, though, this is a book about resilience and hope. Fans of Jacqueline Woodson or Kwame Alexander will appreciate its structure and its stark, poetic power. The novel is written in free-verse and deals with some difficult topics, including anti-Arab harassment. Jude struggles to find her identity, wanting so badly to fit in with American classmates but not wanting to forget her home country, language, food or culture. When the Arab Spring erupts, she leaves her father and older brother behind and moves with her mother to Cincinnati to live with relatives. As Jude slowly adjusts to her new home, her surroundings and American culture as a whole, become more familiar. It’s the story of Jude, a young girl living in a tourist town on the coastline of Syria. The novel Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga documents the life of Jude, a Syrian refugee that moves to Cincinnati, Ohio at the start of the Syrian War, leaving all that she knows behind. Other Words for Home is a middle-grade debut from Jasmine Warga, and it’s well worth checking out-even for grownups. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga With tensions mounting in Syria, Jude and her pregnant mother leave the country to.

Other words for home book review