What to read on World Refugee Day

Can you imag­ine becom­ing a refugee, need­ing to leave your house sud­den­ly with no plans, lit­tle idea of where to go, and the knowl­edge that you may nev­er return? Every day chil­dren and their fam­i­lies are being forced to flee their homes, com­mu­ni­ties, and coun­tries around the world just to stay alive. Today, June 20th, is World Refugee Day, held by the Unit­ed Nations every year to com­mem­o­rate the strength, courage, and per­se­ver­ance of mil­lions of refugees. How can we talk about this real­i­ty with chil­dren? Here are a few help­ful resources:
RefugeeOne has put togeth­er a fan­tas­tic down­load­able PDF enti­tled Lit­er­a­ture for Chil­dren and Ado­les­cents about the Refugee and Immi­grant Expe­ri­ence. It’s sort­ed by age groups, main­ly accord­ing to read­ing level.
Bridg­ing Refugee Youth and Chil­dren’s Ser­vices (BRYCS) has curat­ed an exten­sive list of Chil­dren’s Books about the Refugee/Immigrant Expe­ri­ence.
Author Olugbe­miso­la Rhu­day-Perkovich has com­piled a list of Books to Help Kids Under­stand What It’s Like to Be a Refugee for Brightly.
The Seat­tle Kids Librar­i­ans at The Seat­tle Pub­lic Library have com­piled a list called The Immi­grant and Refugee Expe­ri­ence in Chil­dren’s Books.
The Insti­tute for Humane Edu­ca­tion has put togeth­er this list of 16 Children’s Pic­ture Books About Refugees.
And, last but not least, Goodreads has a HUGE list of Pop­u­lar Refugee Books.
 
We would want some­one to help us if we were in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, so let’s do the same for them and respond to refugees with sol­i­dar­i­ty, com­pas­sion, and action. Books can be a great place to start.