Spectacularly Beautiful: A Refugee’s Story

Shahad goes to a nice school with other nice kids, but she worries a lot about the scar on her face. She thinks it makes her ugly, even though she dresses nicely and does her hair perfect. One day she asks her teacher if the teacher thinks she’s beautiful, and the teacher says yes. And so Shahad asks every day, and every day her teacher says she’s “spectacularly beautiful,” and by the end of the school year Shahad feels a lot better about herself. I like the pictures in this book. They’re both real photos and drawings, but the drawings are colorful and don’t look much like actual people. It’s like a cartoon, with a story that is both sad and happy. I think this book could make other kids feel happy too.