By Anna Desnitskaya
Translated from the Russian by Anna Desnitskaya
Eerdmans, 2024
32 pages
978-0-8028-5631-9
Ages 6-9
The school-age child narrator and their parents used to live in a city, in an apartment with a star-shaped cardboard lamp in the kitchen window. “When I returned home from music lessons … I could recognize our window from afar: a star shone through the cold November darkness.” When war begins, the child and their mother flee to another country. Everything is different: the language, the apartment, the view from the window, the food. “Even Mom is different. Even I’m different.” Then the child’s mom brings home the makings of a star lamp, just like they had at their old home. They put the new star in the window, and things start to feel less different. “It still doesn’t feel like home here. But now, when I return home from music lessons, I recognize our window: a star shines through it….” A spare, skillful narrative captures feelings of comfort, displacement, and emerging hope reflected in both a shift in perspective inspired by the new star, and the hint at some return to normalcy in the music lessons taking place once again. The marvelous, clean-lined illustrations masterfully convey character and emotions through posture, gesture, and facial expression, in addition to reflecting the changing emotional tenor of the story with colors that go from vivid to somber and back again. An author’s note details her family’s displacement and search for a new home after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ©2024 Cooperative Children’s Book Center