Archives for February 2018

Hello, my bookworm friends! Oh, these gray days are perfect for beautifully illustrated books. This is my second book review for the Literary Voyage Around the World Reading challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

Title: A Path of Stars
Author: Anne Sibley O’Brien
Copyright: February 7, 2017
Genre: fiction
Format: e-book
Pages: 40

Summary (from Goodreads):

A touching story of family, loss, and memory.
Dara’s grandmother, Lok Yeay, is full of stories about her life growing up in Cambodia, before she immigrated to the United States. Lok Yeay tells her granddaughter of the fruits and plants that grew there, and how her family would sit in their yard and watch the stars that glowed like fireflies. Lok Yeay tells Dara about her brother, Lok Ta, who is still in Cambodia, and how one day she will return with Dara and Dara’s family to visit the place she still considers home.

About the Author (Genevieve Cogman):

 

“My career creating multicultural children’s books is a direct response to my childhood in Korea, which kindled in me a fascination for the beauty and glory of human differences, and a passion for the truth that, across our differences, we are all one human family. We belong to each other. That’s what I’m trying to get to, through all my work.”

 

When I visited her website I think I liked her even more. This quote from her reflects my own wishes for my company. I always wanted to create products that celebrate diversity. I put more of her books on hold at the library. A few I plan on reading with Apollo.

My Thoughts:

I often come across new books while listening to podcasts, reading book blogs or watching BookTube. But sometimes, books come to me by chance. I was actually just puttering around Hoopla looking at books and came across this book. The beautiful illustration of the girl on the cover pulled me in immediately so I clicked on it to see what it was about.

When I saw that was a story about Cambodian refugees. I immediately thought back to my college days and studies about the Khmer Rouge.

“The Khmer Rouge was the name given to Cambodian (Khmer) communists (rouge, French for red) and later the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia who infamously carried out the Cambodian genocide.” – Wikipedia

I remember that when I learned about the mass genocides that killed between 1.5 – 3 million Cambodian peoples that occurred between 1975-1978. I had never been taught anything about Cambodia prior to my college experience so it came as such a shock. The obvious questions of why and how could this happen were the topics of discussion. It was troubling information to process and I didn’t know what to do with it but to be honest, after college, it didn’t pass by my radar again until I saw this book. Despite the fact that it is a children’s book and does not go into depth on the topic of genocide, it does focus on the Cambodian traditional familial bonds of grandparents and grandchildren as well as life as a refugee and it has stirred my heart again. So let me share this lovely book with you. These are a few pages viewed on my Kindle. The lighting wasn’t the best but trust me the illustrations were so beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that this is good for both young and old to read. The illustrations are magnificent and the story is touching. I really like the way the author paced the story withholding certain information to allow the reader to really appreciate the bond between the grandmother and her grandchild as well as appreciate the details of Cambodian life before and after the event.

I really enjoyed this book and for the messages that it conveys about family, loss, love, being a refugee and the beautiful illustrations I give it 5 butterflies.

Happy reading!

Belinda