But not until each has been braver than ever before. Subhi and Jimmie might both find comfort-and maybe even freedom-as their tales unfold.

Unable to read it herself, she relies on Subhi to unravel her family's love songs and tragedies. The most vivid story of all, however, is the one that arrives one night in the form of Jimmie-a scruffy, impatient girl who appears on the other side of the wire fence and brings with her a notebook written by the mother she lost. And as he grows, his imagination threatens to burst beyond the limits of his containment. But his world is far bigger than that-every night, the magical Night Sea from his mother's stories brings him gifts, the faraway whales sing to him, and the birds tell their stories. Born in an Australian permanent detention center after his mother and sister fled the violence of a distant homeland, Subhi has only ever known life behind the fences. Zana Fraillon, an Australian author, has penned a heart breaking and thoroughly compelling tale about refugees in her latest book, The Bone Sparrow that is centered around a young refugee boy living his days with his mother and his elder sister in an Australian detention camp where he spends his days helping his orphan friend to smuggle and with an outsider to help her read the stories about her family history, all the while longing to meet his father across the ocean and to save his soul from such a wretched place. “But if the world measures a refugee according to the worst story, we will always excuse human suffering, saying it is not yet as bad as someone else's.”

The bone sparrow book