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Posted by Kate, October 30, 2015

Refuge

Nosy Crow publishes Refuge on 12th November. It is a book I dearly hope you will all support.

Like you, I suppose, all of us at Nosy Crow have watched the ongoing refugee crisis on the news – the terrible stories, the appalling pictures, the daily suffering and tragedies – and have wanted desperately to do something. Not just to raise money, but to help parents with young children asking difficult questions about the pictures they see of boys and girls their own age in unimaginable circumstances. But we did not know what we could do.

And then, just five weeks ago, Anne Booth, a picture book author on the Nosy Crow list, sent in a beautiful, careful, succinct text that we read. It made some of us cry with the beauty of the writing and the way it took a story that is already familiar and moving for many of us and cast it in a completely new light. We knew that this could be a book that helps. We matched Anne’s words with the hugely evocative and engaging illustrations of Sam Usher – who had recently visited the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp and met refugees for himself – and we had the book we will publish in just a few days’ time on November 12: Refuge.

Nosy Crow won’t make any money at all from Refuge. By absorbing everything other than our print costs, and through the generosity of all involved in producing, distributing and selling it (the list is on the copyright page of the book), we will be able to give £5 for every copy of this £7.99 book sold to our partner charity, War Child, to help care for Syrian refugee children and their families in camps and host communities in Jordan and Northern Iraq and other children displaced, orphaned and suffering as a result of war too. It’s a small, focussed charity, and they are delighted to be involved.

The Children’s Laureate, Chris Riddell, has called Refuge “an important Christmas book.” He says it is “a book to share with a lump in your throat and an ache in your heart until the beauty and hope of the very last page.”

I agree, and I hope you will too.

You can find out more about Refuge (ISBN: 9780857637413) here.

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