1. Asylum seekers
2. Belonging
3. Danger
4. Diaries
5. Empathy
6. Family
7. Fear
8. Freedom
9. Human rights
10. Refugees
11. Safety
12. Trauma
13. Visual literacy

The jacket cover immediately engages the viewer. A young person is behind a wire fence and the title, ‘Home and Away’ shows ‘Home’ vigorously scratched out. A 15-year-old first-person narrator gives us a sense of ‘you are there’. She introduces the family: Mum, Dad, Claire (11 years), Toby (five years) and herself as the 15-year-old narrator. Young Toby draws the family getting ready for school or work. Immediately following is an ominous dark red impressionistic double page spread revealing a large fish tank with a splash of red inside. Opposite is a television featuring a cowboy brandishing a gun while the text states, ‘April 27. The war starts.’

Thereafter our teenage narrator handwrites succinct reports on dated scraps of paper. ‘May 21. The city’s in ruins’. These are accompanied by Toby’s crayon drawings. By August 29, the situation is dire but a boat offers escape.

Toby’s increasingly chaotic sketches reveal emotional highs and lows. It is now September 30. Ottley’s double page spread shows turbulent, dark-coloured waters. The family believe they are heading for Hollania, a land of plentiful food, space, doctors and hospitals. But their boat is leaking, the steering broken. In a voice devoid of emotion, our teenage narrator reveals dad has been knifed and thrown overboard. Then hope—grey green trees appear on the horizon. Toby’s chaotic scribbles reveal a boat nearby—not to rescue them—but to tell them to ‘go away’. Now behind wire, Toby asks, ‘Are we bad?’ and ‘Why are we in prison?’

A year passes. Mum dies. Claire is in a psychiatric unit. Toby is sedated after self-harming. The people behind wire are the accused—‘not genuine refugees’. Some kind people visit. Our young narrator ends this story: ‘If I could get Claire and Toby together and out of here maybe I could wash cars or something. Whatever it takes, to keep us together. That’s what Mum and Dad would have wanted’.

The story is relentlessly devastating. The Matt Ottley-Toby-created illustrations are intentionally disturbing. While the story itself shows no human empathy, the reader is provoked to respond.

Series: Lothian Australian Favourites

1. Facebook. John Marsden discusses his book ‘Home and Away’ https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2679860488925798
2. Teachers Notes by Robyn Sheahan-Bright for ‘Home and Away’ https://www.hachette.com.au/content/resources/9780734417190-teachers-notes.pdf
3. Teach to Learn blog by Emma Arthur about ‘Home and Away’, 19 April 2012 http://toteachandlearn.weebly.com/literacy-resources-and-ideas/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit
4. Mirrors Windows Doors: Celebrating Diversity in a Whole World of Children’s and YA Literature’ review of ‘Home and Away’ 19 Nov 2015 http://mirrorswindowsdoors.org/wp/revisited-home-and-away-by-john-marsden-and-matt-ottley/