lilypad537 's review for:

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

2.0

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Read this with my students for a novel study this fall. I usually love Applegate's books, and her prose-poetry style in some of her works is very compelling and very interesting to read and discuss with younger readers. But this one feels unintentionally insensitive in its attempt to universalize the "refugee experience". It also romanticizes the United States as a utopian haven for immigrants, and paints Africa as a lawless place of danger and violence. This book tries to confront complex socio-political issues from a child's perspective, but it ends up horribly simplifying them instead.