No More Borders for Josef by Diana Chase
It seems like refugees have been an issue in the media forever. And recently there has been an explosion of books for adolescents that seek to help Australian young adults understand the Islamic community. Lebanese, Pakistani, Afghan, Iraqi children appear again and again in literature for young people today. I am certainly not saying this is a bad thing.
Diana Chase is taking us back a few more years to the fighting in the Balkans. Remember Sarajevo? Occasionally a documentary on TV looks at the huge forensic problem of identifying the skeletons. This conflict popularised the term ethnic cleansing.
A few years ago John Heffernan wrote a poignant picture book called My Dog about this same conflict. Everyone was left wondering what happened to the little boy waiting for his mother to arrive.
In No More Borders for Josef, Diana Chase picks up a story where Heffernan left off. After Josef’s parents are killed an one of the surviving adult men in the village gather the women and children and send them off across the mountains to the border and a UN refugee camp. Josef at age 11 is torn between a sense of responsibility for the younger children and grandmothers and a desire to join the resistance. Given the task of scouting for the escaping group, he agrees to stay and help them to the border. This in itself is enough adventure for any book.
But Chase takes the story further. When the refugees arrive at the border they are taken in by the UN and the Red Cross does what it can to assist. Josef has arrived with nothing, no family, no money and only the clothes on his back. He cannot decide whether to stay in the camp or attempt to cross back over the border (now closed) to join the resistance.
Eventually the decision is made for him when the Red Cross locates his mother’s brother, now living in the Swan Valley. And Josef arrives in Australia….
All of the above happens in the first quarter of the book!! It only sets the scene for the story to follow. Hopefully I have said enough to give you an idea. The book only gets better from here.
