posted on 15 Oct 2024

The Brighter I Shine by Kamee Abrahamian & Lusine Ghukasyan

How do you celebrate your birthdays? Are they times for celebrations and parties or maybe occasions to reflect on past, present and future? Or maybe – like the young Armenian child in this story – a chance to do both?

“Today is my birthday – another year around the sun. The day that I celebrate the first day of my life.

Mama always tells me stories on my birthday. She tells me the story of how I arrived in this world.”

This is her chance to hear the stories that have shaped her family over the years and to discover where she fits in.

The house is lavishly decorated with bunches of rose and mint and sumac. The smells of incense that recall the time of the young girl’s birth swirl through the house.

And, of course, food plays an enormous role. The little girl helps her mother in the kitchen, preparing a birthday feast for the friends that are due to arrive later in the day. While they cook, her mother tells the girl stories of the past.

And the birthday fun and presents all take second place to the stories that are told – stories of the past, of her ancestors and the lands they came from originally. It is these stories that will make the child grow and shine brighter and brighter:

“I ask her to tell me more stories 

on my birthday and all the days in between.

Because the more stories I know, 

the brighter I shine,

and the better I can hear

and feel

the voices

of the spirits

of those who came before me.”

At the end of the book the author tells us more about her own story and how it was she came to grow up in Canada. Now, she tells us, she is keeping alive the traditions of her Armenian ancestors by passing all these stories on to her own child – Saana. She concludes by saying:

“I hope that after reading this book, you feel inspired to tell each other stories about your own history and ancestors.”

The book is lavishly illustrated by Lusine Ghukasyan who is a graduate from the Yerevan Academy of Fine Arts in Armenia and the Marseille Mediterranean College of Fine Arts and Design. Her striking drawings fill double pages with colour and recreate the world of the little girl as her birthday progresses.

This is a story that speaks of how important it is for our own sense of identity to keep alive the family stories we grow up with -  and speaks to us about our roots and how we must tend them throughout our lives. The book is endorsed by Amnesty International ‘as it shows how the treasures of ancestors can live on for a child of refugees’ and it is published by Lantana Publishing - whose commitment to beautiful picture books is unstinting.

You will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will, of course, be happy to order it for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

October 2024