A poignant anthology uplifting the voices of refugees. A book like this would be an incredible resource for teaching teens and young adults, even older folks, about refugee experiences while fostering empathy.

This was a nice collection of stories from refuges from all over the world. Though all due to different circumstances ended up in the U.S., they have stories in common of the struggles to come to the United States to live better lives. It's a good way to try to understand how other people live, the privilege that many do not know they and to have empathy for people who may not be living the same situations as us.

This was a beautiful collection of first-hand accounts of the lives of refugees. It was truly eye-opening. Accounts like this would be great for teaching high schoolers awareness and empathy for refugees and immigrants.

Finding Refuge is beautifully written by the survivors themselves. It has stayed with me long after I put the book down. I find myself making connections to the stories when I read other accounts through other resources, such as the book, Long Walk to Water.

This story took me a bit to get through, as I kept having to pause while I was reading it. I really enjoyed the format of this book with a brief overview before we got into the actual story. I also found myself learning through the different perspectives. However, the writing felt stagnant to me which is why I kept stopping. The stories all started similar as if this was a writing prompt which made me briefly think I was rereading things.

Overall, it’s a good book that I highly recommend for educators and young parents.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The format of this book really highlights the different voices and experiences that immigrants have in their journeys. I really appreciated the way that Rouse elevated voices that are sometimes missed, rather than writing her own story about the young people she knew. This is an important anthology, now more than ever.

In Victorya Rouse’s, “Finding Refuge,” she has compiled a collection of personal essays by current or former students who have all found themselves in Spokane, Washington, due to crises and unrest in their countries. Spokane has been a popular destination for refugee resettlement in the United States and this is often how the students in Rouse’s book have arrived.

“Finding Refuge” reminded me greatly of “The Newcomers” by Helen Thorpe, which came out in 2017. These two books aren’t exactly the same, but what they do have in common with each other is that they are centered around the trauma of young, school-aged refugees. In “Finding Refuge” by Victorya Rouse, the stories of the young refugees are told by the students themselves. This is something I preferred over Helen Thorpe’s “Newcomers” where the consent of the stories was blurred.

Many of the stories in Rouse’s book, however, felt very lacking due to the student still fresh from their trauma. Some of them even felt exploitative to be reading, as well. There were some that were obviously written with the want and desire to be put out in the world, as to share the message that refugees are no different than anyone else, and that “just because they 'came from another country does not make [them] bad."

This then made me wonder how necessary these specific personal essays were to the book. It feels that the author selected essays that would have been better fit for a magazine or blog. The students’ stories are important and need to be told, there is no doubt about that, but even as a middle-grade book, it is lacking the substance to do these students justice in sharing their stories. I say this because they all followed the same formula, as though it was an essay prompt - and it probably was. It’s not right that we read these stories through the prompts of people who haven’t lived it. We should be reading/hearing it from their own prompts, in their own time.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for giving me the opportunity to review this book. I wish that there were a thousand more books like this one. I was heartbroken for these kids and yet felt a glimmer of hope for all of them. Such beautiful stories that everyone should experience.

I like a lot of things about Finding Refuge. First, I think the format of the text is very effective. The author does a great job of giving the reader a brief overview of historical context as well as some geopolitical context.. The maps are helpful as well. Next, the author has a strong collection of stories from students who represent the gamut of refugees; some refugee's stories were hard-hitting while others had fewer hardships. Some families were able to wait in relatively comfortable, safe conditions, while others spent half their young lives in dangerous refugee camps. It's important to have that kind of variety to showcase the wide scope of experiences.

My main critique of the text is that each student appears to answer a specific prompt rather than an open-ended probing question. The student writers might say things like, "I want Americans to know..." or "I'm so grateful to be in America..." Many of the stories start off in the same way; i.e. where the student was born or where they grew up. Their stories are all so different and unique that it seems like a disservice that each should start the same. It seems to sterilize each writer's personality. One exception was Slava. As a reader, I got a greater sense of his personality and incredulity when he asked questions like, "How is this a better life? How can we trade that for this?" Additionally, he made some interesting cultural observations like, "Everywhere I went, people were always smiling, for no reason. I thought, Are you drunk?" I wished more of the stories had that level of candor. At times, the students teased details but ultimately withheld them; of course, they can establish their own boundaries, but it does create some distance between the writer and the reader. It's somewhat unfortunate in this case because a text like this would do a fantastic job of teaching empathy to younger readers.

As an educator, I see this being an excellent text to teach in a middle school English class with a cross-curricular focus in Social Studies. Students may also have their own stories and connections to contribute to the conversation, and it could be a big learning experience for both their classmates and teachers.

I teach high school. Teens have a particularly hard time understanding or empathizing with others. Especially in the last few years when compassion has been hard to find.

Finding Refuge is broken up into sections of refugee experiences based on the home country of the individual writers. Each section begins with a brief description of the country. The individual stories that follow describe the teenage refugee’s experiences on their way to safety.

I think this would be a wonderful addition to a school library. But I can see using this in the classroom as well. Broken up, it could be used to accompany lessons in a social studies class.

Thanks to NetGalley and Lerner Publishing for the opportunity to give an honest review of this book.