A Star Shines Through

Based on the author’s and her family’s experiences after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, this sorrowful, yet hopeful book narrates for young children the upheaval and displacement caused by war. In an author note, Desnitskaya explains that she was on holiday with her children outside Russia, her native land, when the invasion began. When she heard the news, she knew she would not be returning home: “Since then, my husband and I, our three children, our cat, and our dog … have been searching for our home. It turns out that emigration is very difficult and challenging. Even in the most wonderful places, everything feels so different, and you feel like a stranger to yourself.”

In Russia, Desnitskaya and her family’s windows were ornamented with cardboard stars that were visible from a distance. When the family settled in Israel for a time, they created a similar cardboard star and hung it in their tiny apartment window, a taste of home offering some comfort during a disorienting time.

In this poignant children’s picture book, Desnitskaya narrates with sparse text and illustrates with contrasting dark and light pictures the life of a mother and child reflecting her own family’s displacement. The girl and her mother have no choice but to deal with a different language, apartment, view from the window, food, and also with unsettling, distraught feelings. But when the mother purchases supplies to make a cardboard star to hang in their window, the twosome begin to feel that everything around them is a little less strange.

Sharing A Star Shines Through with children offers the opportunity to talk about weighty subjects like war and forced migration and about God’s command to welcome strangers in Jesus’ name. (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers)