Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home
by Zahra Marwan; illus. by the author
Primary    Bloomsbury    48 pp.    g
3/22    978-1-5476-0651-1    $18.99
e-book ed.  978-1-5476-0783-9    $13.29

Sometimes the concept of home is complicated. The author presents her own story of emigrating from Kuwait as a child and making a new life in a new country. Marwan’s Kuwait is a beautiful place “where one hundred butterflies are always in the sky,” her ancestors (represented as a school of fish and two bulls with horns) watch over her, and “my aunties hold me close.” However, because her father lacks Kuwaiti citizenship, the entire family is considered stateless, and “people say we don’t belong here.” They end up migrating from one desert to another — from Kuwait to New Mexico — and despite the sadness of missing family, customs, and a native language, Marwan finds new connections and forges a sense of belonging. New Mexico may not have one hundred butterflies, but it has “new people [who] show me I belong.” Culturally symbolic watercolor and ink illustrations are detailed and playful and combine realism with fantasy, creating a delightful landscape of home that is rooted in the specificity of place and Marwan’s surreal imagination. A lengthy author’s note provides crucial context on the problem of statelessness in Kuwait. A nuanced representation of belonging and citizenship that will ring true for many whose sense of home has never been absolute.

From the March/April 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.