Today I am delighted to share with you Karen Hendriks’s recent picture book Home as part of a Books On Tour promotion.
Home, published by Daisy Lane Publishing, is a story of hope for a brighter future.
I previously introduced Karen to you when we explored how creativity was celebrated in her picture book Go Away, Foxy, Foxy. I am also pleased to say that, in some way, Karen and I are writing buddies. We both have stories in last year’s anthology Tell ‘em They’re Dreaming as well as in this year’s anthology to be released next week Once Upon a Whoops!
About Karen Hendriks
Karen Hendriks is a children’s author who lives in a small seaside village in Shellharbour, New South Wales. Picture books are her favourite kind of books. Karen adores how words and pictures join together to create story magic in picture books. Karen is very passionate about writing quality stories for children.
About Home — the blub
War ends, yet its dark shadow remains.
A family is forced to flee their home.
As they journey through hunger, long cold nights, and homelessness,
a heart locket whispers words of hope.
And a country that’s far away,
calls for those that are no longer wanted.
It offers new beginnings and a precious place, once more to call home.
As explained in an interview with Romi Sharp on the Just Kids’ Lit blog, the book was inspired by a journey taken by Hendriks’s own family after the Second World War. It is a slice of history of which many are unaware.
Hendriks writes:
Between 1945 and 1946, three million Sudeten Germans were expelled from the Sudeten Mountains to Germany, Austria and the Soviet Zone. It was the largest forced refugee movement of a single population in the 20th century. I always felt the deep sadness inside my Oma about the loss of her family home. This pulled at me to write about losing home. When researching for Home I discovered that my Mum, Oma and great Oma and Opa were Sudeten Germans. My Mum was a baby when they were forced to leave their mountain village called Wunschendorf, in Czech. It is now known as Srbska. My great Opa was in still in a concentration camp for opposing Hitler. So it was my Mum as a baby, Oma and Great Oma and they walked from their village to East Germany. This story is so important to me because the plight of the Sudeten Germans is not really known and their story is my story, too.
You can read more about Hendriks’s family and the illustrator in this post on Just Write for Kids.
What I like about Home
Continue reading: Finding ‘Home’ — a new picture book by Karen Hendriks – Readilearn
Norah Colvin 
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