Aya is an “asylum seeker” not a “refugee” i.e., a someone who has found refuge in a country. This beautiful book portrays Aya as a heroine, not a victim. She has compassion on the other girls in the ballet class and doesn’t wish them the knowledge of hardship she’s discovered. The book touches on her experiences leaving Syria—the bomb that destroyed the ballet studio there, her leg injury, her mother’s extreme depression, and her fear that she won’t be able to do what her Dad asked of her. The reader suspects that Aya’s Dad has drowned or is dead, but it isn’t explicit. People are working on finding him and the final fundraiser dancing performance was supposed to help find him (or help him find them?) I love the way dance helps Aya work through her experience and memories and begin to heal. A beautiful book that really is about having compassion on each other. Aya is a convincing and inspiring character. Inspired by Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes. ( )

Representation: Syrian main character
Trigger warnings: war themes and military violence, death of a child, death of a father, death of a friend, PTSD, refugee experiences

7.5/10, this is one of the few books that I deeply enjoyed when I first read this and somehow it stands up to the test of time and I would still enjoy this if I read this again, I feel like this is when Pirouette by Robyn Bavati meets Refugee by Alan Gratz and it's just a well executed book in general. It begins with the main character Aya living in Syria and everything looks normal at first until a war happens in her country and she is forced to leave with her family which I found familiar since I've read books like this before. Anyways this was just a flashback as it cuts to Aya in England in a ballet school with some other peers; turns out that she already has some ballet experience and does well in her classes and makes friends and enemies as well which I found quite realistic. The story jumps between Aya's journey from Syria to England where she gets on a small boat and I think her father died there which was sad but then they had to wait at an asylum camp for the government to let them in (they did) and Aya in the present. She further developed her ballet experience so that she can get into the school of her dreams and she succeeded eventually and that was heartwarming however I would like it if the writing was better and most of the other characters had more depth other than Aya who was the only one who experienced character development. ( )

What a powerful, poignant read this novel was! It took me on an emotional roller-coaster and left me drained. At times I smiled and at times I cried. My heart broke for Aya and her family, but it soared at the kindness of virtual strangers. On more than occasion I wanted to hug Aya close and shake some humanity into the UK's bureaucracy.

I loved Aya. For an eleven-year-old she showed maturity beyond her years. She was brave, responsible and compassionate. The joy ballet brought her was touching as it gave her a brief opportunity to forget the situation she and her family were in.

The author cleverly weaved Aya's harsh reality with flashbacks from her life in Syria. Some were happy and others were frightening, and they showed the courage, pain and hardships of being an asylum seeker.

"No Shoes in Syria" was not only an inspirational novel, told with warmth and compassion, it is an important one highlighting the plight of refugees across the globe and the importance of showing kindness and generosity to those in need. Highly recommended. ( )

A thoughtful novel for older children, readable by teens and adults too. Aya is an eleven-year-old Syrian girl who loves to dance. She's an asylum seeker in the UK, with her mother (who is sick) and her small brother. We don't learn until near the end of the book why her father is not with them. The main storyline sees her begin to be able to dance again, although she experiences some difficulties and prejudice.

Aya is a likeable, believable girl who is passionate about dancing, but also very responsible and caring. We read about her long and often traumatic journey from war-torn Syria in ways that feel authentic but without anything gratuitously unpleasant. It's a great book for seeing a little of what it's like to be an asylum seeker from the point of view of a child, and would make an excellent read for anyone of about eight or nine and upwards.

Recommended.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2020/06/no-ballet-shoes-in-syria-by-catheri... ( )

Having seen the movie Cave last week, I was somewhat prepared for what this book offers. What I wasn't expecting was how seamless the two stories in it would be and how well Aya's experiences would be portrayed. Told in present day, followed in most chapters by flashbacks beginning before the war in Syria broke out, this is what happened to eleven year old Aya, her physician father, her shell shocked mother and her baby brother. You first encounter Aya while she's waiting to find out whether her family, minus Dad, will be granted asylum in Great Britain. The number of hurdles this young girl must face would make most adults quail. In addition to taking on the role of family spokesperson, as she's the only one who can speak English, her paperwork keeps getting lost, the volunteers handling asylum seekers are poorly trained, not to mention feeling overwhelmed, and there is the complication that the system believes her mother asked for asylum when they arrived in Greece after nearly drowning on the nighttime crossing from Turkey. If that were the case, they would be ineligible for a second asylum request.
Two things help Aya keep up the struggle, one is her connection with other refugees at the center, who start bonding with her, as well as watching out for her mother and brother after she becomes their interpreter, the other is the familiar music coming from the second floor at the refugee/community center. It's some of the same melodies she danced to in Aleppo when she took ballet lessons before the family home was bombed and they had to flee.
When she investigates, she is quickly befriended by Dotty, a bubbly girl who becomes interested in Aya's scary trip to safety. While their friendship blossoms, the elderly ballerina teaching the class, a refugee herself from Hitler's terrors in Czechoslovakia, sees the hidden promise in this plucky, but vulnerable Syrian refugee. The rest of the story, and it's an amazing one, alternates between Aya's memories of the long journey to safety and the challenges she and her family face in their quest to find some stability in an unsafe world. This is a book that deserves a place in all school and public libraries, not only because of Aya's pluckiness, but because it portrays just how precarious the plight of over 11 million refugees across the globe really is. ( )