She loves American movies and pop music, imitates the way Reese Witherspoon speaks English, and dreams of becoming a movie star when she grows up. Home for 12-year-old Jude, the young Syrian refugee who tells her story in OTHER WORDS FOR HOME, has always been a city on the Mediterranean coast filled with tourists who buy candy and soft drinks from her father's shop. Trying to explain prostitution appropriately to an 8 year old was a bit of a challenge, but the rest was amazing! Overall, it is appropriate for 8+ but heads up that there is one part where Jude talks about sneaking the movies Practical Magic and Pretty Woman (neither of which would be allowed because of witchcraft and prostitution). For example: Why would tourists stop coming to Jude’s hometown? What happened in Syria? What is Issa trying to say about Bashar al-Assad? Let’s try to infer what some of these Arabic colloquialisms mean without looking them up. We ended up reading it together to talk through some aspects of the book. Think House on Mango Street… accessible reading but a lot of details and inferences to talk through. She’s an excellent reader, and this book is easy to read in terms of level, but the prose is so spare that it requires a lot of higher level thinking. I read this book with my 8 year and it is so beautiful (I often read ahead because I enjoyed the style so much).
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