The Bicycle: How an Act of Kindness Changed a Young Refugee’s Life

Collaborating with McCormick (Sergeant Reckless), Kurdistan-born debut author Babakar tells a story based on her own experience as a child refugee. During young Mevan’s early life, “figs fell from the trees and the air smelled like honeysuckle” in Kurdistan, “a lush and hilly corner in the north of Iraq.” Though she is the littlest girl in her extended family, “the love all around her made her feel ten feet tall.” Then the ruler of Iraq sends soldiers and helicopters to force the people in Kurdistan away and into the mountains. Escaping in a van to Turkey, then by plane to Azerbaijan and by train to Russia, Mevan makes herself successively smaller and even wishes to become invisible. Only in the Netherlands, where the family moves two years later, does she feel welcomed, but she still makes herself small—until she’s given the titular object in an act that makes her feel “a hundred feet tall.” Gouache, watercolor, and crayon illustrations from Imamura (Love in the Library) capture the dappled light of Mevan’s pastoral family home in Kurdistan against other landscapes’ stark geometry and the feeling of possibility represented by the bicycle in this hopeful personal telling. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. An epilogue and author’s note conclude. Ages 4–8. (May)