by Kate Rafiq 
 
Boo lives at the end of The Street with parents, Pax and Zig. Their love is vast; their “smoots [hearts]… floop [dance-walk/walk-dance] with joy”. The Street’s houses are made of “skyblocks [meteorites][and mooncretes [moondust]”, painted pink by the morning sun.  The Street is a happy one, where neighbours come out to greet each other and the day. 
 
But, one morning, as The Street’s residents set off for work and school, they meet a checkpoint manned by “Klangs [bullies]”, fearsome figures in armour. Later that evening, the people are turned away from their favourite, “floopiest”, place of all, the Wamjam. Soon their passage through the wider streets is barred. Restrictions and threats escalate at an alarming rate as the Klangs disconnect the hospital’s power supply, turn off the water, burn down the people’s orchards and, finally, evict all The Street’s residents from their homes. 
 
In the final pages, we witness this displaced population in exile, holding each other and insisting on the survival of their culture as they carry on their traditions and, of course, carry on “flooping”. Above all, they keep their hope for a return to their homeland alive and burning. 
 
From a 2024 Little Rebels Award Shortlistee, an allegory which is both timeless -applicable to wars and forced migrations everywhere- and clamorously resonant in the present. Told with smatterings of a delightfully playful fictional language (a glossary is provided!) and blanketed in a wonderful palette of sunset colours, Kate Rafiq manages to achieve the near-impossible: an honest account of injustice which never traumatises a young reader and which leaves them with something which feels very much like hope. Age 4-8, Paperback 40pp
 
Themes: Refugees and Migration