MIGRATIONS

This inspiring and soothing book is the fruition of an exhibit of the same title, featuring postcards sent by more than 50 children’s-book illustrators from around the world to express solidarity with today’s migrants.

Each postcard is a work of art; many are submitted by award-winning illustrators. Most feature birds in flight coupled with excerpts of poetry or words of encouragement: A flying ostrich does the impossible; a swallow flies across a field of gray and reveals spring behind her; six humorous bird busts accompany a message to “Fly high!”; an albatross “holds in its eye the storm / And … / The small green island of its home”—a message says that where we go becomes part of us. The brief, poetic messages and illustrations beam with encouragement. They collectively highlight the universality of the traveling experience, acknowledge loss, and find and seed hope in a better time to come. The book is organized around themes of “departures,” “long journeys,” “arrivals,” and “hope for the future.” A preface by Shaun Tan highlights the power and responsibility of spreading hope through works that talk to the imagination. This small but powerful book definitely succeeds in this aim and will appeal to readers from migrant and host communities alike, young and old.

A timely and heartening work.