This accessible, exquisite novel shines with gentle humor and explores themes of moving, family, nature, and immigration. At each stop, Siddi finds a small stone that he later slips into Aref’s suitcase-mementos of home. They visit the camp of a thousand stars deep in the desert, they sleep on Siddi’s roof, they fish in the Gulf of Oman and dream about going to India, they travel to the nature reserve to watch the sea turtles. But rather than pack, Aref and Siddi go on a series of adventures. His mother is desperate for him to pack his suitcase-but he refuses. He does not want to live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his parents will go to graduate school. He does not want to leave his elementary school, his friends, or his beloved grandfather, Siddi. This is Naomi Shihab Nye’s first novel set in the Middle East since her acclaimed Habibi.Īref Al-Amri does not want to leave Oman. In this brief novel, told in short chapters by the acclaimed poet and National Book Award finalist Naomi Shihab Nye, Aref Al-Amri says good-bye to everything and everyone he loves in his hometown of Muscat, Oman, as his family prepares to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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