29 Mar / Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home by Zahra Marwan [in Shelf Awareness]
Debut author/illustrator Zahra Marwan’s inviting, evocative picture book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky, presents her family’s relocation from one desert to another on the opposite side of the world. Her poignant opening dedication, “To my parents, who should have never had to leave,” immediately foreshadows forced departure and the challenges to follow.
Once upon a time, home was “where one hundred butterflies are always in the sky,” in a desert near the sea where her father swims, her mother reads, her aunties drink tea, and “ancestors… are always watching.” But her family is no longer welcome, and Zahra must “say [her] goodbyes without knowing why.” Her father promises magic in the new place but “each day feels like a year” to the girl who is deprived of familiar language, culture, and beloved relatives. And yet, “people dance. They are happy.” Instead of butterflies, “one hundred balloons fill the sky.” This “place of high desert,” Zahra realizes, is also home.
Marwan draws on her own family’s removal from Kuwait to New Mexico. In her touching back matter about family and art, she reveals the historical reasons for her father’s “stateless” status despite her family’s generations of Kuwait residency. “So much of my memory of childhood feels dreamlike,” Marwan writes, which she mirrors in her “traditionally”-created art. Her initial sketches are refined then enhanced with ink and watercolor washes, creating enchanting, winsome scenes. Without erasing the difficulties of displacement and reinvention in a strange land, Marwan ensures a colorful, captivating odyssey for younger readers.
Discover: Zahra Marwan draws on her family’s displacement from Kuwait to their eventual home in New Mexico in an animated, timely picture book debut.
Review: “Children’s & Young Adult, Shelf Awareness, March 29, 2022
Published: 2022
Readers: Children