Home of the Brave

Snow

When the flying boat

returns to earth at last,

I open my eyes

and gaze out the round window.

What is all the white? I whisper.

Where is all the world?

The helping man greets me

and there are many lines and questions

and pieces of paper.

At last I follow him outside.

We call that snow, he says.

Isn't it beautiful?

Do you like the cold?

I want to say

No, this cold is like claws on my skin!

I look around me.

Dead grass pokes through

the unkind blanket of white.

Everywhere the snow

sparkles with light

hard as high sun.

I close my eyes.

I try out my new English words:

How can you live

in this place called America?

It burns your eyes!

The man gives me a fat shirt

and soft things like hands.

Coat, he says. Gloves.

He smiles. You'll get used to it, Kek.

I am a tall boy,

like all my people.

My arms stick out of the coat

like lonely trees.

My fingers cannot make

the gloves work.

I shake my head.

I say, This America is hard work.

His laughter makes little clouds.

Recipes

Kek comes from Africa.

In America, he sees the snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He’s never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter—cold and unkind.

In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she’s missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: a girl who is in foster care, and old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means “family” in his native language. As Kek awaits word of his mother’s fate, he weathers the tough Minnesota winter by finding warmth in his few friendships, strength in his memories, and belief in his new country.

Bestselling author Katherine Applegate presents a beautifully wrought novel about an immigrant’s journey from hardship to hope.



Katherine Applegate is the author of several bestselling series, including Animorphs, as well as The Buffalo Storm, a picture book.

Home of the Brave is Katherine Applegate’s first stand-alone novel. “In Kek’s story, I hope readers will see the neighbor child with a strange accent, the new kid in class from some faraway land, the child in odd clothes who doesn’t belong,” she says. “I hope they see themselves.”

Ms. Applegate lives with her family in North Carolina.