If your comfortable life vanished tomorrow, how far would you go to find safety?
In her contemporary novel
”Boy, Everywhere”, A.M. Dassu challenges the typical “refugee” narrative by starting with a life many students will recognize. Thirteen-year-old Sami lives in a comfortable Damascus suburb, obsessed with football and his iPad. His world shatters when a mall bombing forces his family to leave their home, and the story follows their perilous trek through Turkey and across the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom. As his father, a successful doctor, struggles with the loss of status and his sister Sara stops speaking from trauma, Sami must grow up fast. The book’s impact is well-recognized, having won the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award and earned a spot on the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlist and the Carnegie Medal nomination list.
This story is a vital addition to any Changemaker collection because it humanizes the statistics associated with SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. By showing the sudden collapse of a stable society, it pushes students to think about why peace is the foundation for everything else. Educators can use Sami’s journey to ground a Grade 7 unit on human migration, moving beyond maps to discuss the “Open-minded” and “Caring” traits of the IB Learner Profile. For instance, a teacher might ask students to identify the specific barriers Sami faces in the UK and then task the class with designing a more inclusive welcome program for their own school. Seeing Sami transition from a boy who lost everything to a “Risk-taker” who protects his family helps students see that they, too, can step up when they spot unfairness in their own communities. It moves the conversation from pity to a genuine understanding of shared humanity.
