Refugee Boy: Benjamin Zephaniah Paperback – 7 Sept. 2017

This book is amazing it has a great story line and is just phenomenal

Amazing, great quality, no rips or tears and amazing delivery.

So sad that at this time of writing, having bought this book a few days ago for my daughter, that I would be hearing of his untimely death. Always witty and thought provoking and loyal to his ideals he was truly a figure to look up to. His books were not to the literary standards of some, but he still engrossed enough people to examine the lives of others and their life conditions. RIP Benjamin.

School book and supported learning.

I read this book as a 50 year old and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is aimed at the young adult reader but I found it utterly engaging. The story of Alem the young refugee torn away from his family and roots in Ethiopia and forced to live in Britain first with a foster family and later with his devastated father is told with compassion but also with a certain amount of wit in terms of its portrayal of Alem, the studious young avid reader and his foster family including kindly parents and stroppy teenager daughter Ruth. The story is also written with much factual detail including the inhumane way that refugees are treated in the UK which I fear will have only gotten worse under the current 'hostile environment' and multitude of disinformation currently circulated by the media about the perceived preferential treatment given to refugees and asylum seekers by the authorities The story takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride as you become deeply involved in the desperate plight of the young protagonist Alem to acquire the things most children and young people will take for granted like a safe place to live, a chance to learn, a supportive family and friends.In particular the final section of the story deals with Alem's experiences as he is reluctantly given the limelight by his new friendship group to highlight the plight of refugees in the UK and that for him this experience is one that he himself is living. The story ends not on a positive but more of a realistic culmination of events which made me consider how fragile the human experience of refugees and asylum seekers is in the UK and how the threat of deportation is constant and very real.

This book has an amazing storyline that will grip you from the first to last word. This beautiful novel has all the emotions a good book needs and it shows the life of a 14 year old boy whose life turns upside down from a war in his parents countries. Zephaniah deserves a round of applause for this book, it teaches us all how to be humane and how everyone deserves a say and how we all should be treated equally.

I love this book. I teach it every year and it's always a brilliant read

I have a problem with books like this. It's a common mistake I encountered a lot when I worked as a publishing editor. The issue is when an author fails to understand and resolve the difference the market and the readership. The market is who buys the book; the readership is who reads it. If they are out of alignment, the resulting book is often uneven in tone because it is pitched at two different groups at once. Refugee Boy is written for the schools market, and as an English teacher myself, it raises lots of interesting issues about immigration, human rights, multiculturalism and social responsibility that my students can debate and discuss at length. It is effectively a textbook, and serves the same purpose as a provoking media article, as opposed to being a noteworthy piece of fiction. For example, some of the phraseology is lacking in naturalism e.g. when Alem's father describes himself as a `pan-Africanist' in a letter to his twelve-year-old son. The character development is also extremely disjointed in places - Alem's friend Robert rapidly evolves from playground luddite to intellectual free-thinker and political reformer in order to support the exploration of the themes of immigration and social justice.I have no problem generally with issues-led books, but having raised a number of important issues, Zephaniah has literally no idea how to end the novel, so the resolution, involving a double tragedy, is extremely contrived and lacking in plausibility. A much better example of an issues-led book where audience matches readership is The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.If you are a teacher of English you can do a lot with this book, particularly as many of the contentions raised are dubious to say the least, e.g. that the political asylum process in the UK, which is in fact one of the most liberal and inclusive in Europe, is unnecessarily draconian. As a meritorious piece of fiction in its own right, however, Refugee Boy, has some fundamental shortcomings.