Also by this author: On the Edge of the World
Published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers on August 20, 2024
Genres: Children's
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A poignant story about a displaced family making a home in the aftermath of war.
We used to live in a big city. In our apartment window was a star-shaped lamp, shining through the cold. I could recognize home from far away. But then the war began, and we left for another country. Everything is different here—the food, the language, even Mom and me. Today Mom bought us a package of scissors, glue, and cardboard. Can we make this place feel a little more like home?
Narrated by a young refugee, A Star Shines Through is based on the experiences of the author-illustrator, who left Russia with her family after the start of the Ukraine War. With an evocative palette of blues and yellows, Anna Desnitskaya shows how making art can create a sense of hope, even amidst emigration and resettling.
A Star Shines Through is a story that will wreck you. Based on the real-life and present-day story of author and illustrator Anna Desnitskaya, it tells a story about a family displaced by war struggling to find home in a new country. In their original home, there was a star-shaped lamp that sat in their window, which becomes a symbol of home. When they move the light goes out. Their house changes. The language changes. The food changes. Desnitskaya does a heartbreakingly beautiful job of starkly illustrating in both drawing and words the disruption and dysregulation of an unwanted international move. Only once the family creates for themselves a new lamp for the window—so that the star can shine through—do they feel any hope again.
The story is based on Desnitskaya’s present-day life. A native of Moscow, Russia, she and her family were on holiday when news broke that Russia had attacked Ukraine and begun a war. The Desnitskayas chose not to return home. Instead, they fled to Israel, where they lived in what the author calls “an uncozy apartment” for a while before eventually settling in Montenegro. A Star Shines Through is a thematic retelling of that disruption.
Desnitskaya doesn’t name any countries or take any political sides within the book. A Star Shines Through is meant to a generalized story of displacement and emigration. The line “Then the war began” is the most specific that the book gets, though through the illustrations one should be able to grasp that it is a story of Russian Jews returning to an ancestral homeland. It provides a perspective of emigration that I think is probably missing in the American mindset, which tends to exclusively think of immigration as South American refugees and immigrants coming through the southern border. It also gives a perspective of the average Russian-born person, humanizing them and their plight as they find themselves caught up in a war that many are against.
In real life, Desnitskaya moved again from Israel to Montenegro. It’s not clear if that was before or after the Hamas attack on Israel that has led to Israel’s genocide within Gaza. It adds a layer of heartbreak and despair to know that the family moved from one place to avoid war only to again be thrust into the middle of a conflict they had no desire to be part of. I wish their family peace and stability in their new home—free from the presence of conflict.
A Star Shines Through isn’t just the story of Desnitskaya. It’s the story of millions of people who have been displaced due to war, many of whom whose story is even more uncomfortable. It highlights the human costs of war that go beyond military casualties and shows how cultures are ripped apart and lives are destabilized. At the same time, it shows humanity’s resilience to carry on and make home wherever they are.