Tuesday Read – Illegal by Eoin Colfer & Andrew Donkin. This book powerfully illustrates what it’s like to leave everything behind, putting all at stake, for a faint distant dream that a better life might be realised at another shore. Very few make it to the shore alive.
Told through the perspective of a young boy, Illegal is perhaps more on the innocent side of the spectrum. It’s about “broken trucks & broken promises” and how many migrants perish to their deaths on their way to a better life.
Wide-eyed Ebo is the hero of this book, who crosses the Sahara, lives a dangerous life that involves living in rat infested sewers to save enough for an even more terrifying boat ride across the Mediterranean sea. For a book dealing with a grim theme, ‘Illegal’ manages to be a story about hope, love and dreaming big against all odds.
The book is beautifully illustrated in apt colours. Each panel carries the story forward seamlessly, despite flitting between the past and the present.