Home for Grace
Book of the Month at LoveReading 4 Kids
A powerful and compassionate introduction to homelessness, and the need for kindness, understanding and friendship.
No one knows who Grace is. One day, she appeared in a shop doorway in a sleeping bag, with a cat called Luna, surrounded by strange things.
When Jess and her mum strike up a friendship with Grace, Jess has questions: why did she leave her home? Does she have enough to eat? And what happens when the cold weather comes?
“Home for Grace is a beautifully crafted book which explores the meeting and caring for a refugee from a child’s perspective. The reader is introduced to Grace in a doorway one morning where the mother and child stop to talk to Grace and discover what an interesting person she is.
“The story of Home for Grace resonates with today’s current issues of refugees displaced and fleeing to safety. At one point in the book, Grace tells the mother and daughter how she and her family fled their own country taking only small tokens as memories to a new country.
“Kathyrn White’s compassionate characters highlight the issues around refugees arriving in new lands, and how difficult it is to build a new life. The mother and daughter’s generous gestures toward Grace show how wonderful friendships are made in the most complex and harrowing of circumstances.
“Rachel Dean’s detailed and emotive illustrations allow any reader to immediately understand Grace’s plight, her fleeing from her homeland, the pain and the joy of the new friendship with the mother and daughter in the book. The illustrations are clear talking points and allow the readers to explore the issues around being a refugee and its implications on people’s lives in every context.
“This book works on many levels; as a simple story; as a model showing kindness; as a window into the harrowing existence of becoming a refugee and surviving.
“As an adult reading Home for Grace, whilst it is written for a young audience, I was immersed in the beauty and simplicity of the virtues we have and show to others when they need our help.
“Home for Grace is the perfect book for young children, it encourages readers to become emotionally richer, more compassionate.”
Anne Stairmand
CED, Founder, Refuge In Literacy UK