When Stars Are Scattered

De: Victoria Jamieson, Omar Mohamed

Narrado por: full cast, Dominic Hoffman, Christine Avila, JD Jackson, Omar Mohamed, Robin Miles, Ifrah Mansour, Bahni Turpin, Hakeemshady Mohamed, Sadeeq Ali

Josette Frank Award winner

National Book Award Finalist

An Odyssey Honor audiobook and National Book Award Finalist, this remarkable graphic novel—adapted for audio—is about growing up in a refugee camp, as told by a former Somali refugee to the Newbery Honor-winning creator of Roller Girl.

Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future...but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day.

Heartbreak, hope, and gentle humor exist together in this graphic novel—now adapted for audio—about a childhood spent waiting, and a young man who is able to create a sense of family and home in the most difficult of settings. It's an intimate, important, unforgettable look at the day-to-day life of a refugee, as told to New York Times best-selling author/artist Victoria Jamieson by Omar Mohamed, the Somali man who lived the story. This audiobook is performed by a full cast and includes music and special effects.

Cast of Narrators:

Faysal Ahmed as Omar

Barkhad Abdi as Jeri

Robin Miles as Fatuma

Ifrah Mansour as Nimo and Munira

Bahni Turpin as Maryam and Ladan

Hakeemshady Mohamed as Tall Salan

Sadeeq Ali as Tall Ali

Dominic Hoffman as Michael

Christine Avila as Susana Martinez

JD Jackson as Hassan and Jeri’s Dad

Filsan Said as Nimo’s Mom, Sadiya, and Little Nimo

Dion Graham as David

Samba Schutte as Abdikarim and The Man who Finds Hassan

Hana Robleh as Mama

Abdi Iftin as Abdikarim’s Dad and Salat

Susan Duerden as The Reporter

and Steve West as The Cameraman

with Omar Mohamed reading his Author's Note

and Victoria Jamieson reading her Author's Note

©2020 Victoria Jamieson (P)2020 Listening Library

Reseñas de la Crítica

A New York Times Bestseller

National Book Award Finalist

Schneider Family Book Award, Middle School Honor

YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens

YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Nominee

Walter Award Winner (Younger Readers)

Amazon Best Children’s Book of 2020

New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book

TIME Best Book of the Year

School Library Journal Best Book of 2020

Kirkus Best Children’s Book of 2020

NYPL Best Book for Kids

NPR's Book Concierge Pick

Jane Addams Children's Book Award Finalist

Charlotte Huck Award Honor Book

2021 ALSC Notable Children’s Books List

2021 Children’s Africana Book Award Honor Book

2021 Josette Frank Award Winner

2021 Notable Books for a Global Society List

2021 Kids’ Book Choice Award Winner

YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

★ "Jamieson's characteristically endearing art, warmly colored by Geddy, perfectly complements Omar's story, conjuring memorable and sympathetic characters who will stay with readers long after they close the book . . . This engaging, heartwarming story does everything one can ask of a book, and then some.”—Kirkus, starred review

★ "With this sensitive and poignant tale, Jamieson and Mohamed express the power of the human spirit to persevere."—School Library Journal, starred review

★ "Tragedy is certainly present throughout the story, yet Mohamed and Jamieson’s focus on deep familial love and education works to subvert many refugee stereotypes."—Horn Book, starred review

Life lessons

This is a great book. The school district I work for uses it with 7th graders. What a wonderful way for them to learn about the world and the reasons some of the people that move to the USA need to come here.

This book has a valuable lesson.

This was such a fun book to read! It’s detail was perfection. I had the physical book and was able to read along! I loved his historic story. It shows us how people in poverty have to live. We shouldn’t be rude to them. We should treat them how we want to be treated

I Couln't Stop Listening

This audiobook is the best! Bought for my 4 year old to listen to on a road trip, but my husband and I found it to more moving and entertaining then she. I teared up a lot. His story makes you realize how good we have it. Listening to the afterword to gain resources to help is a must.

When Stars Are Scattered

This was a beautifully told story of perseverance and brotherly love while also proving eye opening account of what life is like as refugee. Powerful and
moving.

Beautiful Story

I appreciate the ensemble of voices that brought this story to life. Thank you for sharing this narrative of a life that seems so distant, yet the experience is so intertwined in our collective human experience.

5 Stars for When Stars are Scattered

Enjoyed this book. It was enlightening and eye opening to how others live in this world that many people take for granted.

Wonderful, Eye opening story - loved this book

My kids enjoyed this as much as I did. Wonderfully written and performed- five stars all around!!
Was very eye opening for my children and me -- will devulge deeper into this subject and how to help.
Highly recommend this book

Deeply moving

A beautiful story that introduced my children to the lives of refugees and opened all our hearts. The audio production was fantastic. Immediately after finishing we donated to Omar’s nonprofit Refugee Strong.

I feel dumb

I dont want to be the only negative review because I did like the story and I think the voices did a good job too. really props to the voices, the author for researching, the story itself, and to the organization the main character ended up starting. if i had money i would donate every month to help for sure. actually i was surprised about the organization mentioned in the authors note at the end that the main character started.
i am not impatient. i am a very nice person. but i seriously thought this book was told super slow. i understand the accents well enough and followed the story just fine even when the parts would jump forward in time i still kept up with what was going on at each part in time. i had to speed up the narration to 1.3x. 1.4x seemed to be too fast, but 1.3x still seemed slow yet perfect enough.
i loved that the main character found someone to love. i mean the story talks about how they met once and then we dont hear anything till the end. i am sure other stuff happens in between the meet and the wedding. it just didnt need to be mentioned. so the fact that they got married was a pleasant surprise.
i wish i knew the exact disability the little brother had. it says he only ever said one word. but in the end as an adult when it says he got help for his seizures im sure he learned to say more. i mean it says he lived with the main character and helped take care of hte main characters kids. surely he had come a long way further than just one word. but what exactly does he have that gives him seizures and how is that he wonly ever said one word? i mean epilepsy comes to mind, but i dated someone with epileptic seizures and aside from never knowing when he would pass out or start to convulse and need me to help him stay medically calm he seemed to function as a working walking talking adult just fine. i kind of wanted to know if the little brother with seizures would write a book about living with his disability just so i could know more because the whole time except for the end even through the time jumps i still kept imagining him as a very little helpless kid who constantly needed taking care of. i mean what was school like for him? did he get to go to school too and how did he handle it?
but the thing that made me feel the dumbest was that i dont think i ever really knew what a refugee camp was. i always thought they were like concentration camps in world war 2 whuch might as well have been nicknamed death camps. only a small portion of people sent to those things actuially made it out alive and sadly to say since it was the 40's there are rarely even anyone still alive today to talk about it. i love history and especially the 2 world wars. so yeah i thought i was reading about that and i was wrong. apparently its a place if you can make it consider yourself lucky because people get sent there because where they are is worse. the government of whatever country the samp is in tries to provide and make it as much like the real world as possible. so that means school and whatever food the country can afford to disperse. there are places to stay and jobs for the adults. it may be a hut with a bunch of other people and it may be working in a field. and it may only be bread and water. i dont really know, but the point is its food and its school and its a job and its a place to stay and its supposed to be better than wherever the inhabitants came from. i leanred all this from the book and now consider myself smarter. but i still felt dumb.
also on a side i feel dumb note this was kenya i think and it talks about the united nations. the main character is from somalia. i guess i didnt know what countries were in the un. he had to go a un office to be accepted to go to the us. wouldnt you g to a us place for that or is there no us place in the un. we have embassies for all kinds of foreign places in the us, but it doesnt go the other way around? ok i need to do some more research on this stuff i guess. also i wasnt sure what year this was supposed to have happened. when it talked about somalia all i could think of was when i did a report on somalia in middle school because it was the place talked about in the news. but at the end when it finally mentions college and married years its more like recent years. i tried to do the math and unless what happened in the news when i was in middle school happened many many years and therefore was still going on when the character was a kid i cant figure it out. does anyone know if somalia is still as bad as it was when it was in the news in the early 90's?
I also was shocked some of the minor people that helped the character with words of advice actually mentioned God. am i so terrible that i thought Christianity wasn't a big thing with that denomination. i mean i think Kenya would i guess kwanza instead of Christmas and i don't know anything about that holiday but i would think if it weren't Christmas then it wouldn't have meant anything GOD like would be included. all religions seem to have their own god in their own way and call it faith, but GOD is another story all together and i thought it only existed in Christianity. I am a Christian and i love it when books try and include God so aside was from being shocked and still feeling dumb i really liked the GOD mentions. props to the author for being brave enough to write a book that's not specifically a Christian category book and throw GOD in.
so if you pay attention i really did like this book. it's just i didn't know how much i didn't know before reading it. i can either choose to learn from it and act on it by doing more research or i can be negative and do nothing thinking I'm dumb and can't learn. nope. i can learn. i read, i listened. i learned. sort of like i came i saw i went. and for the resord i am learning disabled so i can relate to the little brother with disabilities.

Informative . Very interesting !

Excellent voice talent. Deep appreciation for Refugees everywhere.




I recommend this book for any book club.