Overall reflections

Refugee Boy is a dramatic and well written book by Benjamin Zephaniah. The author includes a perfect number of details, not so many that you get annoyed, but still enough to make the book better. Of course how many details a reader want depends on how interested he or she is. However Benjamin Zephaniah managed to catch my interest early in the book so I liked all the details.

Sadly I have to give the book some negative feedback, the ending. When I am reading a book I want an ending, in this case what happed to Alem. It felt like Benjamin Zephaniah was really into this book, but in the end it felt like he just wanted to quit writing. Apart from the end I have nothing negative to say about this book.

The book is written in third person, such as “Mrs Fitzgerald suggested that Alem should have a day off school but once more he was determined to go and his father agreed.” I do not know why Benjamin Zephaniah decided to write in third person. Maybe it was because he felt more confident writing like this or  maybe it was because it is easier to write in third person. But I think Benjamin Zephaniah wanted to include the whole society’s view of refugees. This book is all about refugees and I think Benjamin Zephaniah wanted to show the world how people look at refugees, both negative and positive, and it is very hard to do this if you write in first person. It is possible to achieve this when writing in third person since the author can mix Alem`s thoughts with society`s thoughts. This way of writing also makes the book entertaining and at the same time full of information.

I have heard that a few of my classmates that did not like their books so much. However, I really liked my book and would have read it even if I did not have to!