On February 17, 2022, Anna Desnitskaya traveled with her family from her beloved hometown of Moscow to Cyprus for a week-long vacation. While there, they learned that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Knowing what would almost surely lie ahead if they returned home, they instead took on the tremendous unanticipated challenge of emigration.
Created with readers ages five to nine in mind, this book — which Desnitskaya both wrote and illustrated — offers healing wisdom about how to carry home with you even after irreversible loss. Through the eyes of a child, it tells the story of their family’s heart-wrenching transition, using the imagery of the cardboard star-shaped lamp with which her family decorated their window back home. The child knows the star as the way to “recognize our window from afar.”
But then the war comes, and we see the child’s mother leading her by the hand as they hurry away, tiny figures against an immense darkness. With simple, spare words, we learn that their new country is not like home: “A different language. A different apartment. A different view from the window.” Even the family member themselves have changed.
When the mother brings home scissors, glue, and cardboard to make a new star for the window, though, “everything around us became a little less different.” The grayness of the previous pictures gives way to subtle tones of gold, blue, red, purple — muted, but suggesting the return of life and hope.
Anne Desnitskaya was Russia’s nominee for the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world’s largest award for children’s literature. In her Author’s Note, she shares that after leaving Russia, no matter where she and her family were, they could place a star in the window, and that place immediately felt less foreign to them. She inspiringly conveys the depths of resilience in the human spirit.
