Home Is Beyond the Mountains - Softcover

Lottridge, Celia Barker

3.91

96 ratings by Goodreads

9780888999498: Home Is Beyond the Mountains

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0888999496 ISBN 13: 9780888999498

Publisher: Groundwood Books, 2011

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When the Turkish army invades northwestern Persia in 1918, nine-year-old Samira and her parents, brother, and baby sister are driven from their tiny village. Taking only what they can carry, they flee into the mountains, but the journey is so difficult that only Samira and her older brother survive. Shunted from one refugee camp to another, from Persia to Iraq and back again, Samira finally ends up in an orphanage, where it seems that she will live out her childhood. Then Susan Shedd, the new orphanage director, arrives and, to Samira's amazement, announces that she will take all the children back to their villages to make new lives for themselves. With wonder and fear, Samira and three hundred other orphans embark on an epic march of three hundred miles through the mountains towards home.

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About the Author:

Celia Barker Lottridge is a writer and storyteller who has written several highly acclaimed picture books and novels, including Ticket to Curlew (winner of the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award and the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award), Wings to Fly (winner of the Violet Downey Award and shortlisted for the Hackmatack Award), Berta: A Remarkable Dog (nominated for the Texas Bluebonnet Award, Horn Book starred review) and Stories from the Life of Jesus (Publishers Weekly starred review). She wrote Home Is Beyond the Mountains after hearing her mother's stories about growing up in Persia and after reading letters written by Celia's aunt, Susan Shedd. A former children’s librarian and a well-known storyteller, Celia was born in Iowa and raised in the United States. She now lives in Toronto.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 6–10—When nine-year-old Samira and her family leave their Persian village, fleeing war in 1918, it is the beginning of a five-year odyssey in which she crosses national borders, loses both parents, and creates new family connections before her return, thanks to a determined orphanage director, Susan Shedd. This moving and suspenseful survival story is based on historical events; the director of the Hamadan orphanage in the country now called Iran was the author's aunt. Lottridge focuses her third-person narrative on Samira, imagining details of her prewar daily life, the horrors of the Assyrians' flight, the worlds of refugee camps and orphanages, and the long journey home, and bringing them to life for readers 90 years removed. Escaping Turks and Kurds, Samira and her brother had walked to Hamadan; returning, they were joined by more than 300 other refugee children, traveling the 300 miles on foot in "families" of 12 children organized and led by the redoubtable Miss Shedd. Out of sad, nearly forgotten history comes this triumphant story.—Kathleen Isaacs, Children's Literature Specialist, Pasadena, MD
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