The Star Outside My Window: Onjali Q. Rauf

Product Information

Maybe it's because we think of children's literature as pleasant stories filled with "happily ever afters" or perhaps it's because we view children's books as a form of escapism where nasty topics need to be sugarcoated or avoided entirely.

First things first, although the book Star Outside my Window is projected as middle grade fiction, but any empathetic adult should definitely give it a go!

They played it well, yet one day she didn’t pick them up, and something like an explosion burst in Aniyah’s chest. Seeing through Aniyah’s eyes we feel her innocence and the way it clouds her understanding of events, but with our adult experiences we are able to read between lines that she cannot yet see, and we want to protect her from the hurt to come. When they discover that a rare phenomenon of a star travelling close to earth Aniya believes this star is her mother coming to find them.

Usually I don't mind 'cos some of my best, most brilliant ideas have come from sitting in detention. It centres around Aniyah and Noah who lost their mum through domestic violence and found themselves living with a foster family with Mrs Iwuchuckwu, Ben, Travis and Sophie. She wears lots and lots of necklaces and beads and bracelets so that whenever she moves, she makes clunking noises like marbles moving inside a bag. In this book, as a result of this abuse, Aniyah and her young brother are now with a foster mother (plus adopted daughter and two other foster kids).

You guys are such a force for good and I am a passionate supporter of Indie booksellers, so I'm so happy this worked out well (I'd love to know how many books were sold if you have it to hand - it felt like quite a lot! Along the way, Aniyah’s history emerges, revealing that the paternal abuse she thought was simply normal life was in fact not normal at all and had everything to do with Mum’s death. I really enjoyed this story, at first I did struggle to get into it but might have been because I was juggling more than one book at a time!

This is an honest yet empathetic exploration of how people respond to difficult circumstances, told through the innocent voice of a ten-year-old girl.Her 2021 Barrington Stoke publication, The Great (Food) Bank Heist (illustrations by Elisa Paganelli), was a child's perspective on food poverty in the UK. Keen on astronomy, when Aniyah learns about the naming of a newly discovered star by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, she's convinced it's her mum and that's the only name the star should have. But like multi-award winning The Boy at The Back of the Class, the foundations of the story are very dark indeed.