Nour's Secret Library

This timely tale also includes information about Syria and Aleppo at the end of the book, as well as information about famous libraries through history. There is an author's note that informs us that this book is based on the real life library that children put together in Syria.

The illustrations are rendered in beautiful shades of teals, browns, and reds, and the illustrator does an interesting job of playing with the saturation of these tones to indicate whether the moods and settings are dark or light. The prewar pictures have a lot of white space on the page, with light colors of teal, and the basement features very dark colors of it. This was very striking. There is an impressionist feel to the pictures, and the roughly done lines give a feeling of motion to the pictures.

It's good to see Nour and Amir's life before the war, and with what is currently going on in Syria and now Ukraine, this is an excellent book to introduce what children go through during times of war to young readers, but also shows the resiliciency and hope of the young.

There are a lot of picture books about libraries and reading, but not as many that show libraries set up during wartime situations. Stamaky's Alia's Mission gives a graphic novel treatment to a similar setting in Iraq. This is a great book to pair with Tokuda-Hall's Love in the Library, which covers a library that was created in a Japanese internment camp, and has a similar feeling of hope. Tate's William Still and His Freedom Stories also would be a good companion for this one, and talks about the power of words during the time of the Underground Railroad in the US.