It’s all about the story Personal narratives in

Received: 23 December 2020 | Accepted: 10 March 2022
DOI: 10.1002/berj.3798
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
It’s all about the story: Personal narratives in

children’s literature about refugees
Mary Tomsic | Matthew D. Zbaracki
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne,

VIC, Australia Abstract
Correspondence Stories are one way that experiences, ideas and
Mary Tomsic, Building 460, Level 3, 250 culture are shared with children in educational set-
Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, VIC 3002,
Australia. tings. Commercially published books are the stand-
Email: mary.tomsic@acu.edu.au
ard means in schools for sharing stories. Qualitative
Funding information
No direct funding to report. content analysis was carried out on 30 personal
narrative-based children’s picture books. While the
range of stories told in books is vast, our research
focuses on refugee stories for children in light of the
contemporary political and public focus on refugees
and the forced movement of people around the world.
Scholars have identified that books about refugees
for children can be useful to explore the topic of refu-
gees, but also caution that they can perpetuate sim-
plistic and stereotypical understandings about forced
movement in the world. In our research we exam-
ine personal narratives and propose that educators
should use stories and books written and illustrated
by children as a means to bring refugee children’s
voices into formal educational spaces. We argue that
this is a respectful approach that counters a deficit
model of refugee children; it highlights refugee chil-
dren’s authentic voices and stories told on their own
terms. Additionally, it offers a counter- narrative to
dominant refugee stories in the public sphere and
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-c ommercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2022 The Authors. British Educational Research Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational
Research Association.
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860 | TOMSIC and ZBARACKI
presents understandings of forced migration and

its legacies from children’s perspectives. We sug-
gest that to effectively examine refugee experiences
through literature, educators should use a number of
texts to begin conversations in classrooms, and sto-
ries by children who have experienced forced migra-
tion should be featured.
KEYWORDS
children as authors and illustrators, children’s literature, refugee
stories, stories by children
Key insights
What is the main issue that the paper addresses?

The main issue that this paper addresses is how refugee stories are told in personal
narrative-based picture books for children, and what possibilities they encompass
for educational settings today, considering the large numbers of people forcibly dis-
placed in the world and mixed political and personal responses to this global matter.
What are the main insights that the paper provides?

The main insight that the paper provides is the distinction between books authored
by children and adults, and that published books by children with refugee back-
grounds reflect the complexities of refugee experiences while also validating and
respecting children’s agency and self-expression.
I NTRO DUCTI O N
Stories comprise a large part of everyone’s lives, they ‘express the fundamental nature of
humanity’ (Huber et al., 2013, p. 214). We all have stories we tell, stories we love to hear
and stories that define us. Yet, at times, some stories are lost, or not even shared at all. This
is especially true for refugee stories, and even more so for child refugees who are gener-
ally not invited to share their stories in countries of resettlement. We argue in this paper for
this to change. With the extent of forced migration around the globe today, this examination
into how refugee stories are told is timely. The large numbers of people seeking safety in
Europe from 2015 has been described as a ‘crisis’ often reported in numerical terms, which
overlooks the people who are displaced (Parsons, 2016; White, 2019). Focusing primarily
on statistics is inherently dehumanising, as is the exclusionary and border protection stance
of some countries’ responses to people seeking safety (e.g., Schwiertz & Schwenken, 2020;
White, 2019).
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STORY | 861
We came to this research as educators and scholars whose work crosses the fields
of children’s literature, education, cultural history and migration and refugee studies. We
wanted to evaluate how picture books for children present refugee stories and refugee chil-
dren. We were also interested in exploring the genre of personal narrative writing, examining
refugee stories in books by children. In the twenty-first-century context of dehumanising
responses to refugees, we wanted to consider if personal narratives could be an effective
genre of expression to highlight how forced migration is experienced and understood for
individuals, and the impact this has on people’s lives.
The research questions driving this inquiry are: How do narratives in picture books re-
flect refugee experiences? And what possibilities do personal narratives provide for chil-
dren reading refugee picture books? Before outlining the relevant aspects of the scholarly
literature on refugee stories and personal narratives, we first define how we use the term
‘refugee’ in our work. We then detail our research methodology and our findings, as well as
a discussion of them and the implications of this research.
D EFI N I NG R E FUG E ES
The legal definitions and categorisations of people as refugees, internally displaced people,
people seeking asylum, stateless people and migrants are significant because they deter-
mine the types of legal protection afforded (UNHCR, n.d.). Some of the distinctions fail to
account for the risks to life that people face when they are forced to migrate, hence ‘forced
migration’ is the term used in this paper (Amnesty International, 2020). Our focus here is on
stories by children who have forced migration in their lives and family backgrounds. These
children and close family members may fit into multiple categories listed here, and some may
not be afforded formal protection but have been forcibly displaced. We also use the term
‘refugee’ in a broad sense to include all people who have experienced forced migration. The
cycle of forced displacement is a dynamic process with a range of possible outcomes, rather
than a linear progression from a ‘dangerous’ home to ‘safe’ resettlement (Martin, 2012). We
focus on forced displacement, which results in resettlement in a third country, and note the
medical scholarship that identifies stressors and trauma in this process (Fazel & Stein, 2002).
Scholarly literature on refugee stories and personal narratives
There is a body of scholarship that examines how refugee stories are featured in children’s
literature (Dolan, 2014; Dudek, 2018; Hope, 2008, 2018; Karam et al., 2019; Parsons,
2016; Vassiloudi, 2019; Ward & Warner, 2020). Children’s asylum-seeker life writing has
received less direct scholarly attention (Douglas, 2006). The development of RefugeeCrit
and its application to children’s literature and storytelling has opened new ways of examin-
ing how power, agency and authority are interrogated in the field (Strekalova-Hughes, 2019;
Strekalova-Hughes et al., 2019; Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 2019).
In the school context, Ladd and Melilli (2018) write that ‘Refugee and immigrant expe-
riences must be shared in all classrooms’. Through ‘a thoughtful collection of children’s
literature’, they suggest a ‘rich discourse and dialogue’ can be facilitated. They highlight how
published books can ‘speak to human experience’, with ‘the potential to nurture student unity
in the classroom and diminish the inaccuracies often associated with child refugees and im-
migrants’ (p. 57). While scholars have understood that stories can facilitate social change in
education (Coulter et al., 2007; Huber et al., 2013, p. 213), as Arizpe (2019) notes, there has
been limited in-depth research into the aesthetic and literary strategies that could enable
such change for readers.
Using children’s literature about refugees can help to validate those students who have
similar life experiences (Arizpe et al., 2014; Hope, 2008, 2017, 2018). Teaching with refugee
stories in classrooms for 8 to 12-year-olds can be an inclusive approach that supports chil-
dren with refugee backgrounds. Hope (2008) highlights the potential for student validation
in classrooms, citing research with Eritrean refugee children resettled in Sweden (Melzak
& Warner, 1992). Encouraging personal storytelling can ‘[help] … young asylum seekers to
reestablish their sense of the past in relation to the here-and-now’ (Baraitser, 2014, p. 29).
But in doing this, it is important to not ‘perpetuate assumptions that children from refugee
backgrounds are defined entirely by their traumatic experiences’ (Strekalova-Hughes, 2019,
p. 34). Notwithstanding this caution, Parsons (2016) articulates the significant role that ed-
ucators have in being open to stories their students tell: ‘Listening to our students’ stories,
bearing witness to them, and responding in ways that validate children’s realities and expe-
riences are among the most important things teachers do’ (p. 25).
There are ethical questions to consider when focusing on stories, histories and experi-
ences of forced migration, particularly potential re-traumatisation for students with refugee
backgrounds, imposing identity categories on students and the place of personal refugee
stories in inclusive classrooms. Detailed analysis of how to best teach refugee students
is beyond the scope of this paper and needs to be responsive to specific student cohorts.
Approaches such as trauma-informed teaching practices (e.g., Tweedie et al., 2017) and
material by organisations focused on supporting refugee children and families (e.g., UNHCR
Austria/Sibert, 2019; Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, 2019, 2021) should guide
teachers on their classroom practices and approaches (Barrett & Berger, 2021).
Personal narratives are a form of autobiographical expression that have great value in
classrooms and beyond, where children can communicate events of importance to them
with others (Bunning et al., 2018, p. 24). Hope (2008) suggests autobiography for people
who have experienced forced displacement can positively impact on their sense of self, and
for those with lived traumatic experiences ‘autobiography may be particularly cathartic’ (p.
299). More broadly, Hope identifies a ‘spiral quality’ of autobiography ‘in that it can help oth-
ers reconstruct their own memories too’ (p. 299). Kearney (2003) proposes that ‘The world
is in the classroom. It can only be translated into new cultural webs if we enter into dialogues
and explore people’s lived experience’ (quoted in Hope, 2008, pp. 302–303).
Bringing stories into the classroom which have been created by children with refugee
backgrounds is an act that privileges the voices of children with these backgrounds, and
simultaneously values children’s cultural expression more broadly. Ward and Warren (2020)
suggest that it is important to include firsthand refugee stories in classrooms. Students
need to be able to ‘find themselves represented in the texts available and privileged in the
classroom’ (p. 405). Scholars, however, have not examined published books by children
with refugee backgrounds and this research aims to bring these books into scholarly focus.
Texts used in classrooms have a privileged status, so including stories by children whose
background includes forced migration expands the range of refugee stories that are valued
in formal education. We argue these direct connections and representations by children
with lived experience are important. Author and academic Rana Abdel Fattah (2020) notes
the political significance of stories used in Australian educational settings, and how minority
stories that are part of the formal curriculum are often written by white, mainstream authors
and, therefore, culturally specific stories are mediated by the dominant culture.
R ESE A RCH M ETHO DO LOGY
To study how personal narratives in picture books reflect refugee experience, our research
methodology began with first identifying published picture books about refugees, and then
undertaking a qualitative content analysis which was attentive to the insights of critical theo-
ries, particularly critical content analysis and RefugeeCrit (Short, 2017; Strekalova-Hughes,
2019; Strekalova-Hughes et al., 2019; Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 2019). The criteria es-
tablished for books initially collected were:
• First published in or after 2000.

• Picture book and/or highly visual format.
• Books for children, between approximately 8 and 12 years old.
• Personal narrative from the perspective of a child.
• Story is a realistic representation of the refugee experience, with an authentic voice.
Books were located from the researchers’ experience in children’s literature and literary
representations of refugees, from database and library catalogue searches, discussions
with academic librarians, reviews published in scholarly journals and online forums. The
year 2000 was selected as a starting point because the researchers are based in Australia
and the beginning of the twenty-first century saw the resurgence of a highly charged political
discourse dehumanising refugees and people seeking asylum that focused on national se-
curity and border protection (Bleiker et al., 2013; Devetak, 2004; Manne and Corlett, 2013).
More than 100 books were identified and read by the researchers.
The following questions were developed by the researchers, as part of an explicitly ‘care-
ful process’ (Short, 2017, p. 18) and used to assess which of the 100 books were suitable
for content analysis:
• Could readers learn about refugees and refugee experiences from this book?
◦ Were experiences realistic and not ‘glossed over’ when depicting the context for leav-
ing, refugee journeys and/or resettlement?
◦ Was the ending realistic/complex rather than exclusively ‘happily ever after’?
◦ Did the characters reflect on their experiences?
• Did the story encourage a connection/engagement with the main character?
In applying these questions to our readings of the books, 30 were identified that responded
positively to all these questions (see the Appendix for this list of books). These books were
agreed upon by both researchers.
The qualitative content analysis of 30 published picture books involved multiple read-
ings of all texts to identify how each text responded to the questions above, and to the
second overarching research question (What possibilities do personal narratives provide
for children reading refugee picture books?). This process, described by Short (2017),
is centred around close readings, inferences and interpretations by researchers, which
then creates a new scholarly narrative (pp. 13–14). This analysis was dynamic and in-
volved the authors working independently and then together to refine and categorise our
analysis of the books. We found all books could be useful for readers to examine forced
migration, but some were more successful than others in exploring different aspects of
refugee experiences and providing important possibilities for readers.
In the following sections we present a sample of seven commercially published books
and examples from four community published books by children. These books selected as
representative highlight different strengths and focal points of children’s picture books in tell-
ing personal stories of forced migration. We make the distinction between commercially and
community published books because of the dominance of commercial books and their use
in educational settings. The commercial books were written by adults, while the community-
based books were authored by children. We see this difference as significant in terms of
how, and by whom, stories are told and shared.
FI ND I NGS
Mainstream commercial publications of refugee stories
Commercial publications telling fictional and non-fictional stories were identified as provid-
ing useful explorations of forced movement. In the case of some fictional texts, connections
to personal narratives were highlighted in the peritext. The examples employ literary tech-
niques including symbolism, metaphors, as well as different genre and styles of illustrations,
to explore forced migration. The reasons for people leaving and the specific nature of refu-
gee journeys, aspects of resettlement and ongoing legacies of forced displacement are all
part of the picture books noted below.
A need for people to leave their home and travel to a refugee camp is considered in some
texts. One text that focuses on a need to leave, subsequent refugee journey and camp life
is Suzanne Del Rizzo’s exquisitely illustrated My beautiful birds (2017). This story is about a
boy named Sami who must leave his pet pigeons behind when fleeing war in Syria. It details
the struggles encountered on the journey and in the refugee camp, which he identifies as his
new home. When he meets some new pigeons at the refugee camp, he comes to terms with
his new surroundings. One of the features of this book is the depiction of the difficulties Sami
faces as part of his displacement. An initial refugee journey of displacement is told through
the format of an alphabet book in Anisa’s alphabet (2020) by Mike Dumbleton and illustrated
by Hannah Sommerville. As is consistent in alphabet books the text is brief, written in rhyme,
for example: ‘B is for bombs, when the fighting began. C is for carrying all that we can. D is
for danger, from which we ran’. The book describes the challenges Anisa and her family face
and the illustrations reveal more detail about experiences than the written text alone in the
family’s journey to a refugee camp where the story ends.
Places of refugee resettlement, usually Western nations, are common settings for chil-
dren’s refugee stories. My two blankets (2014) by Irene Kobald and illustrated by Freya
Blackwood tells one such story. In 2018 three bilingual editions in Arabic–English, Dari–
English and Farsi–English were published, reflecting common languages spoken by refugee
and asylum-seeking people in Australia at the time (Books & Publishing, 2018). A young girl,
Cartwheel, is the main character in My two blankets. With her auntie, Cartwheel had to move
from her home to another country which has a different language and culture. She finds
comfort in her home ‘blanket’ of language, culture and life. She becomes friends with a local
girl who teaches her new words. Cartwheel creates a new ‘blanket’ and sees the beauty and
joy of where she now lives. The metaphor of blankets effectively represents different lan-
guages, alongside valuing the knowledge and experiences Cartwheel possesses and her
capacity to learn. A different pond (2017) by poet and author Bao Phi and illustrated by car-
toonist Thu Bui tells the story of a young boy and the very early morning fishing trip he takes
with his father one day. The story is set in the context of refugee resettlement and is based
on the author’s experiences when his family fled from Vietnam to the United States in 1975.
It shows the challenges his parents face regarding work and helping the family survive,
alongside the happiness of the family. The author and illustrator notes at the end of the book
help connect the personal narrative in the text to the experiences of the book’s creators.
A picture book that focuses on a refugee journey and specifically objects of remembrance
is Grandma’s treasured shoes (2020), in which a child tells their grandmother’s refugee
story. It focuses on the challenges of the journey and the shoes she kept as a treasured
object from her childhood. There is a section at the end of the book that discusses refugees
in Australia as well as brief notes from Coral Vass (author) and Christina Huynh (illustra-
tor). The book, published by National Library of Australia, includes archival photographs
and information to place this fictional story in a historical context and Huynh’s illustrations
were inspired by her family’s refugee history, with the main character based on her mother
(Huynh, 2019).
Non-fiction picture-based texts were part of the sample identified, and are more directly
linked to lived experiences of forced movement. One example is Stormy seas: Stories of young
boat refugees (2017) by Mary Beth Leatherdale and illustrated by Eleanor Shakespeare. It
focuses on five children in different historical times as they escaped violence and persecu-
tion in Germany, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan and the Ivory Coast. Personal stories are pre-
sented alongside contextual information and visual representations. This provides readers
with an opportunity to explore forced movement in the past, and to identify common trends
and issues in refugee histories. Forced to flee: Refugee children drawing on their experi-
ences (2019), published by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR),
presents stories and drawings by child refugees from South Sudan, Central America and
Syria, alongside information about these countries and refugee movements. As the title
indicates, children explain their personal stories in both drawings and words. Suggested
for readers over 14 by the publisher, this book highlights child refugee and asylum-seeker
experiences within a Western humanitarian framework.
In this sample of commercially published books, all were written by adults for children.
Even in Forced to flee, with children’s drawings and words, children’s expression is firmly
framed by the UNHCR. Vassiloudi (2019) has argued that humanitarian endorsements con-
struct ‘the idea of the right book as a deterrent to the evils of humanity and as a tool for
remedying injustice’ (p. 39). Rather than positioning refugee children’s expression in inter-
national humanitarian circuits, we propose that books which record and share children’s
personal narratives, where children’s voices are respected and valued on their own terms,
are better placed to directly humanise and individualise children who are forcibly displaced,
demonstrate the skills and capacities of these children and potentially foster child-focused
circuits of creativity, connection and learning for the children reading these books. It is to
these books that we now turn.
Community published stories by children with refugee backgrounds
The stories by children with refugee backgrounds in this study were created in a series of
workshops with children, young people and their families by Kids’ Own Publishing (Australia)
and Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership (Ireland). Both organisations use an arts-based artist-
facilitated process to support children and young people develop published books telling
stories that the authors want to share (Kenny et al., 2017). This research examined books
by children with a refugee background. The stories analysed here are short autobiographies
or memoir texts, mostly less than one page, and have artwork that is usually created collec-
tively by the authors. We came to these publications as researchers who were not involved
in their creation but examined the published books.
The stories were developed, written, and illustrated by the children working with profes-
sional artists using an ‘open-ended and non-directive way of working’ to support children’s
active cultural citizenship (Kenny et al., 2017, p. 61). The books were formally designed,
edited and published, with the intention of respecting the authors’ expression, voices and
culture. The children, as authors and illustrators, are visible in a range of ways; particu-
larly notable is their presence in the peritext in names and photographs (Figure 1), signa-
tures (Figure 2) and explaining the creative bookmaking processes undertaken (Figure 3).
Marshall (2016) identifies counter-storytelling as ‘a particularly helpful concept for theorizing
life writing in picture book form because counter-stories emerge in image as well as in nar-
rative’ (p. 80). We see these peritextual examples as counter-stories because they render
F I G U R E 1 The inside back cover of Our African stories (2014) showing photographs of the authors at work
creating the book, as well as their names [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
visible children with refugee backgrounds as authors and illustrators against deficit under-
standings of refugee students (Arzubiaga et al., 2009; McCarthy & Vickers, 2014).
A key finding from this content analysis is that child-authored personal stories directly
represent aspects of their experiences of forced migration in their own voices and in distinct
styles. Collectively, these stories function as a counter-narrative to the dominant commer-
cially published refugee narratives in the public sphere and provide insight into the legacies
and understandings of forced migration from children’s perspectives. Excerpts below high-
light the themes of family and refugee heritage; connections and disconnections to place
and family; context for forced displacement as well as children’s agency and self-expression
that we identified though the content analysis of stories by children.
Reflecting on how a refugee family heritage has been shared within a particular family is
in the story ‘My mum’s journey from Vietnam to Australia’, published in the book Kids’ own
journeys (2004). The author, a primary school student aged between 7 and 12, explains
at the start of the short story what they knew about this family history: ‘I knew they left by
boat, but nothing else’. The author reveals the everyday setting for learning more. They had
spent a day at their mum’s work, ‘I was bored and watching TV’. And then ‘When we were
driving home I asked her, “How did you get to Australia?” She told me’. The author recounts
the details of their extended family’s escape from Vietnam, ‘from the Communists’, in 1978.
The family left at night, pretending to be fishing, during the escape they were spotted by
soldiers and some family members were left behind. They were on the boat ‘for, I think,
2 weeks’ and then rescued by the crew of an English ship, who took them to Singapore.
After waiting 6 months they were reunited with family members in Australia. The author
conveyed the emotional elements of this exchange, their mum ‘got sadder when she told the
story’, but that ‘For me, if I was there I’d be scared’. This family storytelling moment, shared
in published form, is interwoven into everyday life in Australia, driving home after spending
a boring day at a parent’s workplace. Here a refugee history is shared with both the author
and then the readers, and the differing emotional impacts are revealed. While there is dan-
ger and sadness in this refugee story, details of a life in the family’s country of resettlement
are also revealed. This story provides opportunities for many conversations for readers, with
F I G U R E 2 The inside back cover of Kids' own journeys (2004) highlights the individual authors
through their signatures. More are included on the inside front cover as well [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
a significant one being how family histories are shared. This story has similar elements to
the previously discussed A different pond. Both address forced migration from Vietnam, but
the child’s own family story does not have a sense of nostalgia, but rather is placed within a
mundane drive home.
Another story which presents an author’s refugee heritage is in the collection Our African
stories (2014). The 11-year-old unnamed author introduces the story ‘A really dry place’
stating ‘Hi, I’m gonna tell you a bit about my family’. Beginning this way, the author is clearly
stating they are presenting a narrative to share, and the family story told is done so on their
own terms, telling readers what they want them to know. The author explains the different
locations where family members were born: the East African countries of Eritrea, Sudan,
Egypt as well as Melbourne. The family narrative presented focuses on soccer skills, the
scarcity of water in African countries and some details about the roles of the author’s fa-
ther and grandfather in conflicts. ‘The president of Eritrea was really mean. My dad’s dad
was almost gonna shoot the president and now if we go there he will take us to jail maybe
forever’ (p. 10). This story connects to the BBC children’s book Hamid’s story: A real life
account of his journey from Eritrea (2014), which was based on a child’s experience but
written by adults. Both stories reference violent struggles with government and the need to
flee to safety. We see ‘A really dry place’ as potentially more meaningful than Hamid’s story
because of the author’s expression, an authentic child’s voice which moves between soccer
skills and political conflict. In this example, family heritage and refugee history is valued as
something to be shared, and reveals connections and disconnections across the world.
The reasons behind specific experiences of forced migration are represented in the book
A strong heart: A book of stories and dreams for the future by Syrian and Palestinian chil-
dren living in County Mayo (2018), which was created by children with different cultural and
refugee backgrounds living in Ireland. The introduction explains: ‘We are children who have
fun together. We were born in Syria or Palestine before we came to Ireland. We all speak
many languages, including Arabic’ (p. 3). While stories in the collection cover a range of
themes including sport, friends, family, food, weather and religion, it is the stories about
refugee movement that are of relevance here. One, titled ‘War and flight’, is by 14-year-old
Rahaf. She explains the context of war, where there was ‘fighting to see who would be in
F I G U R E 3 An explanation of the bookmaking process, including photographs of the authors working on A

strong heart (2018) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
power’, why her family left Syria, the journeys they took and family separation. Rahaf ex-
plains: ‘My family left in 2015, because the Government took my brother five times and when
he came home he was not very well’. The family went to Turkey and ‘After eight months …
the men who were going to bring us to Greece took the money and left us in the jungle. That
was frightening’. Rahaf’s brother then stayed in Turkey, and ‘we have not seen our brother
for two years’. The rest of the family was able to go to Greece, where they were ‘in a bad ref-
ugee camp’ and eventually a hotel because Rahaf ‘was sick because I did not have enough
oxygen, because of the wood fires at the camps’. This story concludes with family separa-
tion, but with hope for visiting: ‘We still have a lot of our family in Syria and when the war is
over, we will go for a visit’ (p. 24). The narrative, points of detail and expression all showcase
Rahaf’s voice, clearly articulating how family separation is a key feature of forced movement
and this separation is a realistic end point for the story. The connections between a home
country and country of resettlement feature in another story in the book by Rahaf, where
she reflects on her connection to both Syria and Ireland: ‘I love Ireland because it’s my other
country. Syria is first and Ireland is my other country’ (p. 11). She explains some physical
problems she has and her uncertainty about recovery. These stories provide glimpses into
Rahaf’s life and interweave her past with the present and future. They are strong examples
of a child’s reflection on connections and disconnections with a homeland and new country.
While picture books like My two blankets cover similar themes, highlighting a child’s direct
experiences and voice through stories and illustrations makes them distinct in refugee liter-
ature for children.
There are nine self-portraits in A strong heart and one is included on the cover (Figure 4).
The portraits are a visual form of humanising representation that feature throughout the book.
Some fictional books include drawings by refugee child characters, but they have been cre-
ated by the adult illustrators (e.g., for Anisa’s alphabet). In the child-focused A strong heart,
the self-portraits are strongly linked to the children as the creators of the book. In contrast
to this, in Forced to flee (as noted above), children’s artwork primarily serves a discourse of
international humanitarianism rather than a direct humanising self-representation.
The actions of a child who did not want to leave his home country of Kenya are told by
Kudamba Abaas in ‘Missing my father’ from the book Donkeys can’t fly on planes (2012).1
The story was recorded when Abaas was at primary school in the regional city of Traralgon,
Australia. In a detailed account of departure, Abaas explains he ‘did not want to leave the
place I loved: the place where I was born’. During their resettlement journey, he and his
F I G U R E 4 The cover of A strong heart (2018) with the short title of the book in both Arabic and English.
The cover artwork includes illustrations that accompany Rahaf's stories, examined in this paper [Colour figure
can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
mother had to take a bus to the airport. While waiting, Abaas ‘decided I did not want to
leave Africa and I ran away from my mother’ and climbed a tree: ‘I was good at climbing, so
I started to climb up into the branches’. His mother and others found him and called him to
come down. Abaas resisted. ‘I looked down and thought, “No I am staying right here. In this
tree. In Africa!”’ (p. 40). A person climbed the tree to retrieve him, so ‘I started to go up higher
and higher. I went up, up, up until I ran out of tree to climb’. Abaas was not able to stay in the
tree, and the person ‘got me and took me down, down, down’ (p. 41). While Abaas’s quest
was not successful, in this story readers learn of a child who does not accept the circum-
stances he finds himself in and uses his skills to attempt to change them.
Family separation is also a feature of the story Abaas has told. He explained that ‘be-
cause of the war I did not know my dad very well’ (p. 40). Abaas did not want to get on the
plane to leave Kenya, and to coax him onto the plane, he says his mother said that they were
going to visit his father. During the flight he said he kept asking his mother ‘Where is my
dad?’, to which she replied ‘We are nearly there’. Abaas said that when he realised they were
not in Africa he ‘just wanted to cry’. The story concludes that ‘I want to go back. I want to see
my dad. I don’t know my dad’ (p. 41). Here readers can see the impact of forced movement
on the author, his desire to remain in a home country and to have connections with family
and place. In commercially published children’s literature family separation is depicted, and
in some cases it is very neatly resolved [e.g., Out (2016)], but not always [e.g., Ali’s story …
journey (2014)]. What is specifically valuable in books by children is the insights into chil-
dren’s feelings, the emotional impact of the experience and the realistic way that stories end
without clear resolution.
Parental death is experienced by some people when they are young and is in another
story from Donkeys, where Nyakaka Ruot tells of her mother’s death and the ongoing con-
nections she has with her in ‘My beautiful mum’. Part of the story focuses on a child bringing
the message to her at school that her mother had died. Ruot said: ‘My ears did not want
to hear this message and my head did not want to know it’. To avoid accepting the news,
‘I thought if I kept working and if I ignored the girl, then this could not be real’. The artwork
accompanying this story depicts Ruot running away from this news (Figure 5). Eventually
Ruot sees her mother and said: ‘I had to accept that she had passed away. My eyes were
F I G U R E 5 Illustration accompanying Nyakaka Ruot’s story ‘My beautiful mum’ in Donkeys can’t fly on
planes (2012) [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
seeing it. My ears were hearing it. My heart was feeling it’. While Ruot wanted to resist her
mother’s death, she could not. Ruot and her younger sister later came to live in Australia
with an older sister, where she maintains a connection with her mother through her dreams:
‘My beautiful mother visits me in my dreams. Sometimes she brings my Grandma and my
Grandpa. I did not know my grandparents when they were alive but I know them now’ (p. 39).
In this story, ongoing connection to family is through Ruot’s interior and exterior life. While
connections to family are revealed, the key emphasis of the story is not immediately linked
to forced migration. This story, like Abaas’s and others in Donkeys, reflects a diverse range
of experiences of forced migration, refugee journeys and resettlement; they are stories that
highlight how forced movement is not uniform.
The difficulties of her mother’s death are one of the key features directly addressed in ‘My
beautiful mum’. Vassiloudi (2019) contends that in refugee children’s literature many import-
ant issues, including the loss of family, ‘are muted, if addressed at all’ (p. 38). Of relevance
here is loss in terms of death. Some commercial children’s books do include death, but often
without exploring the impact of this. For example, in Hamid’s story (discussed earlier in this
paper) readers learn of his father’s death, but it is only mentioned briefly. In comparison,
in ‘My beautiful mum’ there is a greater exploration of the impact of this on the author. And
while this depth is not seen in all stories, in this case it provides valuable insights which are
not readily canvassed elsewhere. Vassiloudi also notes that ‘Happy closure’ is ‘another com-
mon narrative structure that most stories have’ (p. 39). While a peaceful, happy resolution is
a common feature of children’s picture books it is not necessarily the reality of all people’s
lives, and both Ruot’s and Abaas’s stories here highlight loss of a parent as part of their life
experience.
D I SCUSSI O N A N D I M PLI CATI O NS
Our focus in carrying out this research has been to consider the nature of authentic personal
stories told in picture books about forced movement and refugees, and the implications of
their use in educational contexts. We see stories as starting points for complex and possibly
difficult conversations where a range of experiences, histories and opinions can be shared.
Following Short (2017), our analysis and interest in these books is multifaceted, because
they are connected to issues that matter to us as researchers and educators, and they are
also issues that impact on young people in their lives and as readers. Picture books can pro-
vide useful introductions about aspects of refugee experience in the past and present, but
we contend that books created by those with direct connections to experiences of forced mi-
gration expand the range of voices and stories that are shared within the formal educational
space of school classrooms for 8 to 12-year-olds. As children’s author Jacqueline Woodson
said: ‘I realized that no one but me can tell my story’ (Woodson, 2003, p. 43) and when this
is facilitated through a published book, significant possibilities emerge.
Crucially, when stories are written and illustrated by children, sharing authentic personal
narratives with other children, child-centred connections can be made, which is a means
through which children’s voices can feature in educational settings. We see this as adding
to an important conversation that Arizpe (2019) calls for in paying greater attention to the
aesthetic and literary strategies that ‘could … promote empathy, change perspectives and
lead to social action’ (p. 3). While our focus on personal narratives and the possibilities for
fostering connections between children in the form of published books is not the same as
Arizpe’s work, we believe the literary approach of showcasing books by children could be an
avenue that supports children’s greater understanding of forced migration and its impacts
(see relatedly Arizpe et al., 2014; Hope, 2017, ch. 9). This is not a simple task, as stereo-
types and hierarchies of power can remain unquestioned and to read such texts effectively
and develop dialogues, students require teacher support to develop critical literacy skills so
the stories are not read as neutral representations (Dolan, 2013; Karam et al., 2019). In sug-
gesting this, our intention is not to restrict people who have experienced forced movement
to a ‘refugee story’, or to unproblematically reinforce ‘stories about refugees as traumatised,
vulnerable, and voiceless’ (Strekalova-Hughes & Wang, 2019). Additionally, we also note
that there are ethical questions to consider about engaging students in such an exchange;
as Hope (2018) has shown, children with migrant backgrounds can have mixed responses
when refugee stories are read in class (pp. 317–318). We note the concerns and difficulties
some teachers have in this area (Hope, 2017; Watkins et al., 2019, pp. xiv–xv); examining
these is beyond the scope of this research and could form the basis of subsequent research.
The community published stories in this paper come from children in their own voices,
which often move between the past and present; they express difficult experiences in direct
ways that do not mask the challenges and sadness, while simultaneously always present-
ing themselves with agency through their storytelling, actions and beliefs. Parsons (2016)
argues for the significance of stories because ‘we are the stories we hear and the stories
we tell’ (p. 21). While the media’s focus on forced migration is often depersonalised, picture
books and stories by children can work against this. Family stories feature in the auto-
biography and memoir text that children have shared in published books examined here.
Solórzano (1997) and Marshall (2016) highlight the approach of sharing family stories from
communities, in preference to those by commercial publishers.
Strekalova- Hughes’s (2019) analysis of picture books about refugees argues for an in-
crease in the diversity of representations of refugee experiences, suggesting ‘Families and
children could add their own representation in the stories for authentic purposes’ (p. 37). The
stories in the books we are focusing on are a type of representation that Strekalova-Hughes
calls for. What many of these books lack, however, is a sustained engagement with the con-
text for forced movement. In the books examined in this paper some of the authors have, in
different ways, addressed this. These are, however, usually brief, and teachers could focus
more on this as part of the critical engagement with the texts in the classroom. While there
are many complexities involved in understanding the political and historical reasons behind
conflict and forced movement, it is important to have contextual understandings for the sto-
ries told and read. We would also argue that the types of stories chosen, and the way they
are used within educational settings, are significant; this needs to be considered locally by
teachers, with their specific students placed centrally.
In educational settings and educational research, refugee children are often viewed from a
deficit position (Karam et al., 2019; Loerke, 2009 in Emert, 2014). We argue that collecting, pub-
lishing and sharing stories by children with refugee backgrounds is a direct act that challenges a
deficit-orientated discourse. This also applies to the picture books by adults with refugee experi-
ences in their own families and childhoods. Inherent in children with a refugee background telling
their own stories, which are published and distributed, is a respect for children’s voices and their
expression. This positions children as knowledgeable and agentic. This is not to suggest that
any one child’s story will provide a complete refugee story. Instead, any of the stories included
here should be considered as ‘a starting place’ for conversations, investigations and reflections
that are essential for critical literacy exploring power, inequalities and the storyteller’s perspective
(Dolan, 2013; Karam et al., 2019; Short, 2019, pp. 7–10; Ward & Warren, 2020). As Baraitser
(2014) writes: ‘Literature has the ability to help us reconstruct ourselves through learning to re-
tell our stories in a self-enhancing way. The “self” constructed by story-making allows a young
person to feel safe’ (p. 61). We suggest that bringing stories by children into formal education is
a significant step that will enable a more genuinely diverse learning context to be created, where
children’s expression, histories and experiences are valued. In arguing for stories by children who
have experienced forced migration, it is important to consider how the child author is understood
and constructed for readers, and the impacts of the story for readers as well. We see the forced
movement of people around the world as simultaneously a political, humanitarian and personal
issue, and to highlight the personal and human impact of this, stories by children for child readers
are one means educators could use to humanise refugee experiences in classrooms.
CO NCLUS I O N
We found, in response to the questions that all books were read against, that stories by chil-
dren with refugee backgrounds were more explicit in their depictions of difficult experiences
and emotional responses to these experiences were clearly expressed. It is because of this
we see them as holding significant value for use in formal educational settings. We do not
suppose that books by children should be the only stories to be used, but we would argue
that they should firmly feature in how forced migration is discussed in classrooms. We are
wary of the implications of commercially published refugee children’s literature’s general fail-
ure to account for the political and historical reasons behind forced movement. The impact
of this is creating a simple and inaccurate binary distinction between some countries as safe
and others as dangerous (Strekalova-Hughes, 2019), and war being ‘mostly portrayed as a
self-created condition’ (Vassiloudi, 2019, p. 3). While many of the stories examined here do
include references to the places people left and why, the stories themselves do not provide
a detailed engagement with this context. This is where teachers do need to support their
students to understand these stories within the historical and political settings of war, conflict
and people’s forced movement, so that simplistic stories of refugee escape and resettlement
are not conveyed. As Mickenberg and Nel (2011) state: ‘Neither children nor literature for
them can be extricated from politics’ (p. 445), and teachers should not resist this, but rather
create classroom environments where politics and power are discussed. When this is done,
the potential for children’s literature to be an ‘important vehicle for ideas that challenge the
status quo’ (p. 445) can more readily be realised, and particularly stories by children can be
placed centrally in this project.
In this paper we have advocated for a realistic way to listen to the voices of children with
refugee backgrounds and facilitate their stories being more widely read. There are several
resources teachers could use in their own classrooms to empower their students to tell their
stories, with varying degrees of formality. There are dedicated publishing apps for print and
ebooks (e.g., Common sense education, n.d.), commercial organisations that publish books
(e.g., Classroom Authors, 2020; Liv & Blue Publishing, 2020; Schoolmate Publishing, 2020;
Studentreasures, 2017) and resources about how to create short books that are folded by
hand and published using a photocopier (e.g., Kids’ Own Publishing, 2020). These are use-
ful for teachers to explore the possibilities for their students to create children’s books in the
spirit of those we examined in this paper.
Publishing a child’s story validates their voice as well as refuting the more dominant and
sometimes stereotypical refugee stories that circulate. Whether children are from Eritrea,
Somalia, Syria, Central America or anywhere else in the world, all children deserve to share
their stories and have their experiences validated and respected. While commercially published
children’s literature can provide exposure to some of these issues, children’s actual stories are
a distinct and direct means for children to see themselves in stories, as well as to understand
what others may have experienced. And this is what children’s literature should embrace as a
part of its genre; stories about children, written by children, to share with children.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the colleagues who generously provided feedback on drafts of this paper.
Open access publishing facilitated by Australian Catholic University, as part of the Wiley -
Australian Catholic University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
E T H I C S A P P R O VA L S TAT E M E N T
No ethics approval was required as all research materials are formally published and avail-
able in the public domain.
P E R M I S S I O N T O R E P R O D U C E M AT E R I A L F R O M O T H E R S O U R C E S
Permission to reproduce material in figures 1, 2 & 5 was kindly granted by the publisher,
Kids’ Own Publishing, Abbotsford, Australia. Permission to reproduce material in figures 3
& 4 was kindly granted by the publisher, Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, Sligo, Ireland.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
There are no conflicts of interest to report.
D ATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T

Data sharing is not applicable to this paper as no datasets were generated or analysed dur-
ing the current study.
ORCID
Mary Tomsic https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2451-9336
ENDNOTE
1
Kudamba Abaas’s family name is published as ‘Abas’ in Donkeys can’t fly on planes.
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APPENDIX
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It’s all about the story Personal narratives in

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It’s all about the story Personal narratives in

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Received: 23 December 2020 | Accepted: 10 March 2022