I read that Khaled Hosseini had a new book coming out titled Sea Prayer, so I got on the waitlist at the public library as soon as it was ordered.

I failed to notice that it was a juvenile book.

Thank goodness I didn’t know it was a children’s book. If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have checked it out.

I recommend this book to everyone, no matter your age, as long as the reader or listener is old enough to understand something of the plight of refugees.

Mr. Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and now lives in California. He is beloved author around the world for his novels The Kite Runner, And the Mountains Echoed, and A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Sea Prayer is a wonderfully illustrated in watercolors by artist Dan Williams.

The book was inspired by the story we all heard about Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 trying to reach a safe land.

The following words were for me the most powerful in Sea Prayer. Due to copyright restrictions, I cannot quote quite as much as I’d like. Therefore, to set the stage, the writer is talking about how unwelcome they are as refugees. Then, he writes the following lines:

“But I hear your mother’s voice,

over the tide,

and she whispers in my ear,

‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling.

Even half of what you have.

If only they saw.

They would say kinder things, surely.’”

Indeed. If we had only seen half of what that three-year-old boy had seen, perhaps we would say kinder things to and about refugees.

Since my last blog post

I’ve read several good books, and I look forward to blogging about them on November 5.

I’ve also reread some tips about blogging. No doubt, you’ll be glad to know that I was reminded that it’s not about me.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book or two to read. I’m reading My Dear Hamilton:  A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie. .

If you’re a writer, I hope you have uninterrupted writing time.

Thank you for reading my blog. You could have spent the last few minutes doing something else, but you chose to read my blog. I appreciate it! I welcome your comments.

Let’s continue the conversation. Would you consider reading a children’s book and be open to the possibility that it might make you look at a world problem from a different perspective? Have you read Sea Prayer, by Khaled Hosseini? What did you like or dislike about it?

Janet