This is a fantastic book. It was a moving story with the main character really capturing your heart. I would highly recommend it.

Although I have already purchased this book for my libraries, personally I didn't enjoy it as I found it difficult to visualise the setting. Only after reading more about it did I realise it was set in Australia. I have already recommended it to pupils who have enjoyed it though.

A deeply moving story of life in an Australian detention facility for refugees and asylum seekers, where hope comes from powerful imagination and stories.

Subhi has never stepped foot Outside. He was born in the detention centre. It's red dust, gritty food, family tent and fences are the only life he has ever known. His days are spent as a runner with Eli, his best friend, looking after his Maá, and annoying his sister, Queenie. His nights are spent waiting for the Night Sea to come and bring him treasures from his Ba, who will join them soon.

Jimmie lives at the top of the hill, with her Dad and brother. Unable to read, she longs for someone to tell her mother’s stories again, as she rubs the bone sparrow charm at her neck. She heard that the trucks rolling into the Centre take the children there bikes. All she wants is a new bike; the last one her Mum bought is too small.

One night, with the bone sparrow for luck, curiosity beats Jimmie and she goes to see what the Centre is really like. She finds the weak links and she's in. 

Subhi hears the Night Sea calling and is outside his tent. This time the treasure appears to be a girl, one that definitely doesn't belong in the centre.

The two strike up a friendship, based on Subhi’s ability to read Jimmie’s mums book of stories. But can they save each other?

A devastatingly beautiful, enlightening heart wrenching tale of the invisible and ignored people in our world today.

Great for fans of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Looking at the Stars and Welcome to Nowhere.

I was sent The Bone Sparrow by the publisher for an honest review.

The Bone Sparrow is a fictional story but the refugee camp conditions described by Zana Fraillon were from real Australian detention centre reports.

The story is told through the eyes of ten-year-old Subhi, who was born in an Australian refugee camp. The camp ‘shelters’ Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who have escaped from one hell hole only to end up in another. Again, this is not a fictional issue, if you search for Rohingya on Google, you’ll find plenty of horrifying articles about the ordeal faced by Myanmar’s minority. Like Rushanara Ali’s piece on The Guardian, for example.

When I started reading The Bone Sparrow, I felt like the pacing dragged a lot and I didn’t find it grabbing. So, I kept forgetting what the story was about and was more than happy to leave the novel alone and forget about it. But then I forced myself to carry on reading it because a) it was sent to me by the publisher b) because it had a lot of great reviews and c) because I had to admit the description sounded right up my alley, I was just at the part of the novel where things weren’t happening yet. I had to read on, and so I did.

I loved Subhi’s voice, I thought he was a likeable character and Fraillon did a fantastic job of portraying his isolation amongst people who he was a part of, but also not because he hadn’t experienced the horrors they had outside the camp. The use of short, simple sentences and Subhi’s conversations with his Shakespeare-resembling rubber duck kept me aware of the fact that I was reading a child’s narrative.

‘Then that girl hocks up the biggest ball of snot I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen some pretty big balls of snot being hocked around here – and she spits that snot right on the ground. That’s when I know. Guardian angels don’t hock up snot.’

The side characters such as Subhi’s ‘adoptive’ brother Eli and his biological sister Queeny were complex characters despite how young they were. I can’t recall their exact ages, but I think they were just a bit older than Subhi, I know Queeny wasn’t a teenager yet and Eli wasn’t considered an adult by a longshot, he may have been in his early teen years. Eli and Queenie had, of course, seen the Rohingya persecutions. As readers, we see them struggle with their exchanges with Subhi at times because Subhi can’t understand what they mean or feel, the camp is all he has ever known.

I liked Eli and Queeny’s defensiveness, and the way they protected Subhi. The relationship between them and Subhi appeared authentic and that made me attached to them and made me care about what happened to them.

Subhi learnt to read English at camp thanks to Queeny. His love of reading becomes an important part of the story when he comes across Jimmie, a girl from the Outside who needs help reading a book left by her mother. The interactions between sweet Jimmie and curious Subhi were lovely in all their childishness.

'“Stories don’t work if you stop all the time. Don’t you know about reading?”'

Beyond the moments of loving and caring sibling relationships, sweet childlike wonder and cute jokes between a little girl, a little boy, and sometimes even a rubber duck, there are moments of pain and despair.

I thought I wouldn’t cry because I held it in for so long, and by the time I hit page 267 I thought, if I haven’t cried yet after everything that’s happened, then there’s no way I’m going to tear up now. And then I read the rest of that page and cried my eyes out.

It was so hard to believe that the people being held in the camp were refugees. Innocent people who fled from violent persecution, people who have had their human rights stripped away and trodden on, yet they were the ones being treated like criminals. The camp was lined with fences, the refugees were guarded by Jackets who, for the most part, were disgusting and cruel. Their human rights continue to be violated, they were fed food you wouldn’t even let your dog near, and they endured awful unhygienic conditions. These people were completely cut off from the world, unwanted and forgotten.

‘Remi has these fits and headaches that make him scream so hard it cuts through your thinking. He says all he needs is his medicine. “I thought you would help me.” He says over and over again. I don’t know who he’s talking to though.’ 

Fraillon’s message was loud and clear, it yelled out from every page. And it was scary, because despite Subhi’s story being fictional, isn’t this the state of the world we live in today? Weren’t people demanding refugees have their ages confirmed via dental tests to prove they’re children? Weren’t people saying they didn’t want refugees in their countries because it would increase crime? Don’t places like Yarl’s Wood exist? In the afterword, Fraillon leaves us with this message:

‘UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, has called on all nations to stop treating asylum seekers like criminals. Across Australia, the UK, USA and Europe, asylum seekers and refugees are routinely detained, fingerprinted and, in some places, numbered.’

The Bone Sparrow was a spectacular, damning novel that stripped the entire refugee situation naked and humanised the refugees. I’d highly recommend this novel.