Like Hanna Jansen's Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You, the focus on one child gets behind those news images of streaming refugees far away.” ― Booklist “The boy's first-person narrative is immediately accessible. The book highlights the importance of attitude to success, a life lesson worth repeating as well.” ― VOYA Kek's voice is particularly strong as he models the difficulties experienced by a new immigrant. “This beautiful story of hope and resilience. A memorable inside view of an outsider.” ― Publishers Weekly Precise, highly accessible language evokes a wide range of emotions and simultaneously tells an initiation story.

Prefaced by an African proverb, each section of the book marks a stage in the narrator's assimilation, eloquently conveying how his initial confusion fades as survival skills improve and friendships take root. “In her first stand-alone book, Applegate (the Animorphs series) effectively uses free verse to capture a Sudanese refugee's impressions of America and his slow adjustment. Kek will be instantly recognizable to immigrants, but he is also well worth meeting by readers living in homogeneous communities.” ― School Library Journal, starred review Kek is both a representative of all immigrants and a character in his own right.

“American culture, the Minnesota climate, and personal identity are examined in this moving first-person novel written in free verse.

The home of the brave