'Summer reading: Home is Where My Heart Is' by: Smriti Halls

HOME: Being an inmigrant myself, I often wonder: Where is 'home'? Is 'home' in our hearts? and the ones we left behind? Can you define 'home'?

A heartwarming tale that invites readers to reflect, to explore emotions and understand feelings...

More about Smtiri Halls: https://www.smriti.co.uk/

Beautifully illustrated by The Klaus Flugge Prize shortlistee Alice Courtley.

Published by Andersen Press, June 2023

Category: Picturebook

Suitable for: 5+

Pages: 32

Genre: Family - Stories about families and friends -

Skills: reading /speaking/ writing/ drawing

Description: Follow Bear's journey far from home and back again and discover the meaning of home. Written in rhyme, supported by beautiful illustrations, readers will want to read it more than once!!

Aim: the story may help children talk about the importance of home and family.

What can be done: explore difference between 'house' and 'home',

find what home means to different people

talk about refugees and their home

think about problems when moving houses

Draw your home.

When asked about the inspiration for this wonderful rhyming tale, Smriti mentioned:

Speaking on the inspirations behind the book, author Smriti Halls has said, “I was inspired to write the story because, in a physical sense, home for me has been in many places. It’s encompassed many schools and houses and cities – from Nellore – the home of my birth in South India, to North Wales, Manchester, South Wales, Newcastle, St Albans, Liverpool, Hong Kong and London. And while it’s incredible to feel a little piece of all those places is home to me, it wasn’t always easy – starting new schools, making new friends, trying to fit in – sometimes I was welcomed; sometimes I was not. Sometimes I felt myself, often I didn’t.

.... That was home, wherever we were, and it remains so today.

Heartbreakingly, home is not always a given. We live in a world where many are forced to flee physical homes and homelands, where many are separated from those they most love, where home feels far away. Luckily our sense of home is not static – it’s something we carry with us wherever we go, something we can share with whoever we meet… which means that WE can be home for someone else… WE can be there for someone who needs us… WE can be ready to stretch out our arms in welcome to someone new and make them feel at home – like they really belong. Even better, we can let others share with us a piece of the home that they carry with them in their hearts – and we can feel glad for the piece of home we carry in ours.”

Smriti Halls has been shortlisted for oscarsbookprize.co.uk and the British Books Awards among others.