On the Move: Home Is Where You Find It
by Michael Rosen (Author) Quentin Blake (Illustrator)
In a masterful new collaboration, personal poems and poignant art illuminate the experience of refugees and immigrants everywhere.
That's why
it can happen again
.It does happen again.
It has happened again.
Some of Michael Rosen's relatives were lost before he was born, in the Holocaust. First, he wondered about them. And he wrote poems. Next, he searched for their stories. And he wrote poems. Then he found their stories. And he wrote poems. Now, in a companion book to The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II, Michael Rosen has brought together forty-nine of his most powerful poems, exploring the themes of migration and displacement through the lens of his childhood in the shadow of World War II, the lives of his relatives during that war, and migration, refugees, and displacement today and tomorrow, here, there, and everywhere. Throughout, atmospheric watercolors from master illustrator Quentin Blake evoke the hardship, exhaustion, isolation, and companionship of being on the move. At once intimate and universal, On the Move probes the power of art to adapt, bear witness, and heal.
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School Library Journal
Gr 4-8--Rosen writes poetry about his life as a young boy in London, his understanding that family members disappeared during World War II, and his search for them and their stories. The introduction defines the difference between migrants and refugees--an important distinction today as the world fills with both. Poems are divided into four sections: "Family and Friends," "The War," "The Migrants in Me," and "On the Move Again." Thoughtful readers will be aware that Rosen's search has no easy answers. The poems are not straightforward or simple, but more evocative of a child's feelings about the knowledge of missing family members as empty places in a family history, as well as how the search for answers brings some clarity and even more mystery. Sections on war and the disappearance of family are truthful, but without unnecessary trauma. Not until the back matter do readers learn that the poems are an extension of Rosen's book, The Missing: The True Story of my Family in World War II. Resources include a list of organizations supporting refugees and people affected by displacement, as well as a list of charities and organizations with information on the Holocaust. Illustrations by Blake in watercolor, using mostly gray and shades of blue, are evocative and complementary to the poems; they mostly depict people on the move without details, but the people are clearly either running toward or away from something. VERDICT These touching poems are important today and any day that requires people to think about war, family, and refugees.--Susan Lissim
Copyright 2022 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.Review quotes
—Booklist
JNF042000 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Poetry | General
JNF025090 - Juvenile Nonfiction | History | Holocaust
Poetry
Refugees
Emigration and immigration
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
