… I look up to the birds that seem to be following us …
They are migrating just like us. And their journey is very long too, but they don’t have to cross any borders.
I hope, one day, like these birds, we will find a new home.
A home where we can be safe and begin our story again.
The Journey by Francesca Sanna is a book that takes your breath away no matter how many times you read it.
With intensely powerful illustrations she packs an emotional punch that floors me every time.
Her pictures speak volumes about the experience of refugee families as they flee from persecution.
What they sacrifice to survive.
The life & memories they leave behind.
The courage to give up everyone & everything they know to have a hope of starting again.
Francesca Sanna shows the power & strength of refugee mothers who have to encourage their children
And reassure them that though what they are doing feels so wrong they have no choice if they want to live.
This book shows the courage of families who have to flee knowing not what they are running into.
The Journey helps us to empathise & try to understand the horror children have to go through to reach a place of safety,
The enormity of the obstacles they have to overcome & the relentlessness of their struggles to reach safe shores.
This book will grab your heart and pound your head and leave you thinking what can I do?
How can I play my part and help these families who just want to be safe?
What can I do to help mothers just like me who want to protect their children?
The Journey shows us a mother and her two young children set out on a journey in search of a safer place.
It shows us the many different elements of their journey,
The fears they face, the tears they cry, the oppression they overcome
The lengths that they must go to just to survive.
This is such a an incredible moving book and really hit Esther, William and I hard today as we discussed it
And packed our own small suitcases and drew pictures of our home to help us remember it
And the things that we love about it if we had to leave.
This is a book that will stay with you always after reading it once.
It reminds us that we all have the right to a safe place to live.