April 2024 Book of the Month

Category: Library, Monthly Book Reviews

Choose Love – Nicola Davies and Petr Horáček

A small group of readers are meeting every week in the library to discuss the shortlisted books for this year’s Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing.   The eight books we are reading have been chosen because librarians rate them as the most outstanding books published last year.  On the list is a book of poetry called Choose Love, written by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Petr Horáček.  At first glimpse it looks like a picture book for younger readers.  It’s a large hardback book with a poem on one side and an illustration on the other.  The simplicity of its production is deceptive; it’s a devastating read, with images and lines of poetry that will haunt you.     

Nicola has taken the lived experiences of refugees she met with the Refugee Trauma Initiative and used them as the starting point for these poems.  The poems are short, written in sequences of four under the headings Departure, Arrival and Healing.  The illustrations which accompany each poem are painted in a palette of greys.  Sometimes you get a small glimpse of colour peeking through but mostly they speak of anguish and desperation.

We hear about the “Refugee Crisis” so frequently on the news that it can sometimes feel a bit abstract.  In the Foreword to the book, it talks of the need to “rehumanise those who have been dehumanised to the point of non-existence.”  These poems help you to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation and in doing so make you question our response to what is happening in the world.  Please read this book.  In doing so you can help steer the conversation away from punishing refugees and towards a more compassionate response.  Read this book and choose love.