Top Ten Middle-Grade Debuts, Booklist
2021 Skipping Stones Honor Awards, Skipping Stones Magazine
Best New Children’s Novels, The Guardian
Best of the Best Books 2021
Kirkus Reviews Best Middle Grade Books of the Year 2021
Editor’s Choice Books for Youth
Editor’s Choice Books for Youth
ALA/ALSC Notable Children’s Books
CCBC Choice
Best Children’s Books of the Year 2022
What turns citizens into refugees and then immigrants? In this powerful middle-grade debut, Sami and his family embark on a harrowing journey to save themselves from the Syrian civil war.
Sami loves his life in Damascus, Syria. He hangs out with his best friend playing video games; he’s trying out for the football team; he adores his family and gets annoyed by them in equal measure. But his comfortable life gets sidetracked abruptly after a bombing in a nearby shopping mall. Knowing that the violence will only get worse, Sami’s parents decide they must flee their home for the safety of the UK.
Boy, Everywhere chronicles their harrowing journey and struggle to settle in a new land. Forced to sell all their belongings and leave their friends and beloved grandmother behind, Sami and his family travel across the Middle East to Turkey, where they end up in a smuggler’s den. From there, they cross the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean and manage to fly to England, only to be separated and detained in an immigration prison for the crime of seeking asylum. Yet the transition from refugee to immigrant in a new life will be the greatest challenge Sami has ever faced.
Based on the experiences of real Syrian refugees, this thoughtful middle-grade novel is the rare book to delve deeply into this years-long crisis. A. M. Dassu has used her publishing deal advances for Boy, Everywhere to assist Syrian refugees in her city and set up a grant to support an unpublished refugee/recently immigrated writer. Sami’s story is one of survival, of family and friendship, of bravery and longing … Sami could be any one of us.
