{"id":785,"date":"2022-07-06T16:07:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T20:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/?page_id=785"},"modified":"2023-10-05T15:18:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T19:18:15","slug":"review-story-boat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/review-story-boat\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Story Boat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samantha Piede, United States<\/p>\n

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\"Story<\/figure>\n<\/div>
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Review of Story Boat<\/em> by Kyo Maclear, illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh (Montreal: Tundra Books, 2020). Also translated and published in Turkey (Albaraka Yay\u0131nlar\u0131, 2020), Brazil (Companhia das Letras, 2021), and Germany (Zuckers\u00fc\u00df Verlag, 2021).<\/p><\/div><\/p><\/div>\n

When the protagonist in Kyo Maclear\u2019s Story Boat<\/em> (2020) opens the book with \u201cHere we are,\u201d it is unclear to readers where exactly \u201chere\u201d might be.\u00a0 The two-page spread, beautifully illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh, showcases a refugee family bundled for winter and trudging through a grey and orange landscape, but the sparse trees and circling crows give little in the way of national identification.\u00a0 Where exactly is \u201chere?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, here is\u2026 Here is just here,\u201d the protagonist clarifies.\u00a0 \u201cOr here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her answer, while poetically vague, speaks to the realities of refugees: in which \u201chere,\u201d in the spatial sense, is always changing.\u00a0 In many of the book\u2019s illustrations, the protagonist\u2019s family is depicted as on the move: packing up supplies, trundling through forests, adrift on a raft.\u00a0 \u201cSometimes,\u201d the protagonist tells us, as she chases a butterfly in a temporary housing settlement, \u201cit\u2019s here just for a moment.\u201d\u00a0 Maclear\u2019s decision to avoid anchoring the book in any specific<\/em> \u2018heres\u2019 allows the book to speak universally<\/em> to refugees in crisis: that, regardless of where their journey begins, the move to safety is rarely short or straightforward.\u00a0 When safety must take precedence over familiarity, one develops, like the protagonist, a fleeting relationship with place.<\/p>\n

For children especially, this disruption can be jarring.\u00a0 We all need something in our lives that feels stable and unmovable — perhaps why \u2018home\u2019 is so often linked to physical location.\u00a0 Yet, in this text, Maclear nudges readers towards other forms of stability.\u00a0 Early in the book, the protagonist reflects on drinking out of her favorite cup.\u00a0 \u201cEvery morning,\u201d she relays, \u201cas things keep changing, we sit wherever we are and sip, sip, sip, sippy, sip, sip.\u00a0 Ahhhh.\u00a0 From this cup.\u201d\u00a0 It’s a simple gesture, but also an anchoring one.\u00a0 A cup is portable: easily carried and not limited to a particular location.\u00a0 In shaping a ritual around something that they can control, the protagonist and her brother create their own sense of foundation.\u00a0 She tells us, \u201cAnd this cup is a home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Photo<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Throughout the book, the protagonist finds new \u2018heres\u2019 not grounded in location. \u201cHere,\u201d she tells us, \u201cis a blanket.\u201d She treasures its warm familiarity where she can \u201csnuggle and dream\u201d during times when \u201cthe world feels not quite cozy, and everyone seems weary.\u201d \u201cHere\u201d is also a solar-powered lamp by which she and her brother can \u201cwrite and read and wonder, what will we be?\u201d It\u2019s notable how much space Maclear makes for dreams and for hope in this story.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u201d is not even always tangible. The protagonist finds \u2018heres\u2019 in music (\u201ca song that everyone can sing\u201d) and in starlight (\u201ca million sparkling stars\u201d): phenomena she can carry with her without carrying anything at all. She even finds a \u201chere\u201d in the tale that she\u2019s telling. The protagonist is often depicted with a notebook at her side, and, in several of the drawings, she is shown adding words and pictures that capture her dreams. \u201cEvery week,\u201d she shares, \u201cWe dream and draw, make and play, search for treasure, find our way and grow, and wait and wait and wait, adding words to this story.\u201d Maclear reminds us that one\u2019s life, one\u2019s own story, can also function as \u2018here\u2019.<\/p>\n

It is tempting, in stories like these, to emphasize the pain of the refugee experience: the uncertainty, the loss of one\u2019s \u2018heres\u2019. But Maclear takes a different tack, giving readers the tools to focus on hope and on wonder. Kheiriyeh\u2019s gentle illustrations, replete with soft corals and creams, help sustain that warmth, conveying visually to readers that this space is a safe one for dreaming. This move may be intentional on her part; at the age of one, Kheiriyeh herself was a refugee, fleeing Iran with her family at the outset of the Iran-Iraq War. One wonders how her family too held onto hope.<\/p>\n

Education is not averse to discussions of war as a theoretical phenomenon, but so rarely are we given tools to help us deal with it. Maclear does. This book provides students and educators with a model for what one can still hold onto when the rest of the world is changing. Teachers may be able to prompt students, in light of the book, to reflect on what they think a \u2018home\u2019 or a \u2018here\u2019 feels like \u2013 stable, certain, warm, safe \u2013 and what sorts of things in their lives, outside of \u2018place,\u2019 carry those same qualities: a memento, perhaps, or an activity or a ritual. By highlighting these possibilities in their own lives and hearing from others, students may recognize new ways to anchor themselves: an instrumental coping skill for anyone enduring a significant change.<\/p>\n

Story Boat\u2019s<\/em> approach \u2013 emphasizing different ways we can create stability, especially when the world is tumultuous and uncertain \u2013 offers teachers and students something that is missing from much literature about crisis: a way to regain some control over one\u2019s own story, a means to keep dreaming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samantha Piede, United States When the protagonist in Kyo Maclear\u2019s Story Boat (2020) opens the book with \u201cHere we are,\u201d it is unclear to readers where exactly \u201chere\u201d might be.\u00a0 The two-page spread, beautifully illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh, showcases a refugee family bundled for winter and trudging through a grey and orange landscape, but the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":177,"parent":0,"menu_order":74,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-785","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":990,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/785\/revisions\/990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}