The New Children’s Book That Treats Home as More Than a Place on a Map

  “The Crossing” understands that home can mean family, safety, medicine, familiarity, and the hope of finally being known. Home is one of the most overused and underexamined words in children’s literature. It is invoked sentimentally, often as if its meaning were stable and obvious. But for many people, children included, home is a layered and shifting thing. It may be where family lives, where one’s body can be cared for, where work is possible, where language is familiar, or where one can stop feeling strange. Diana L. Malkin’s The Crossing is deeply affecting because it treats home with that full complexity while keeping the story beautifully accessible to young readers. Its four characters all loved the places they came from. They loved family, friends, and familiar worlds. And yet each has still left. This fact alone gives the book an emotional maturity many children’s titles lack. It suggests that leaving home does not mean rejecting it. Sometimes a place can be beloved and...