Oh Give Me a Home

From Author Jane Kurtz, winner of the School Library Journal Best Of The Year and numerous other awards.

In verse, Oh Give Me a Home relates the story of a girl’s inside-out view of America as she journeys from Ethiopia, searches for friends and belonging.

Kirkus Starred Review

Booklist Starred Review

Selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Book.

In elementary school, Jane knows that Maji, Ethiopia, cool and green, perched on a mountainside of waterfalls and monkeys, is the perfect place to live. Or it would be perfect if she had a pet or a best friend.

Jane is full of ideas that include schemes for an animal to play with. A real pet, not the dik dik that dies, the monkey that tries to bite her fingers, nor the elusive cat that lives in the shed and has just absconded with her litter of kittens. But her plans are derailed as Jane learns she is to move back to America with her family.

America and Africa collide as Jane tries to answer the simple question, ＂Where am I from?＂ Entering grade school in suburban America for the first time, will she find a best friend a continent away from her real life in Africa? Or is America-where she meets her relatives for laughter and frolicking and big holiday meals-her real home?

Jane Kurtz is an award-winning author of more than forty children’s books. She lived in Ethiopia from the age of two where family members worked for nearly thirty years. Currently, Jane is an adviser to Ethiopia Reads and is the creative director of the Open Hearts Big Dreams book program and lives in Portland, Oregon.