Bessora - Author

Alpha Abidjan to Gare du Nord

Shortlisted for the UKLA 2018 Book Award One of our Books of the Year 2016 |  Alpha hopes that his wife and little son are in Paris and he’s desperate to see them. Denied a visa to travel he must make the long, long journey from his home in the Cote D’Ivoire to Europe as an illegal immigrant, or as he says ‘adventurer’.  The story is told through striking images, mostly black and white, colour is used sparingly; sophisticated yet childlike too they vividly depict the people and places of his journey and each one has the power to bring the reader up short.  The text too equally demands and holds our attention. Though this is very much one man’s journey it’s one undertaken by many thousands of others and, as Michael Morpurgo says in his introduction, it’s a story we all need to hear and to understand. ~ Andrea Reece Other books for young readers that sensitively but honestly explain the situation facing refugee or immigrant children include Kiss the Dust by Elizabeth Laird, Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah and The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce.