Oh Give Me a Home
Written by Jane Kurtz
Catalyst Press
240 pages
Reading Level: Ages 8–12
ISBN: 978-1-960-80320-7
Available July 8, 2025
In verse, Oh Give Me a Home relates the story of a girl’s inside-out view of America as she journeys from Ethiopia, searches for friends and belonging.
In elementary school, Jane knows that Maji, Ethiopia, cool and green, perched on a mountainside of waterfalls and monkeys, is the perfect place to live. Or it would be perfect if she had a pet or a best friend.
Jane is full of ideas that include schemes for an animal to play with. A real pet, not the dik dik that dies, the monkey that tries to bite her fingers, nor the elusive cat that lives in the shed and has just absconded with her litter of kittens. But her plans are derailed as Jane learns she is to move back to America with her family
America and Africa collide as Jane tries to answer the simple question, “Where am I from?” Entering grade school in suburban America for the first time, will she find a best friend a continent away from her real life in Africa? Or is America–where she meets her relatives for laughter and frolicking and big holiday meals–her real home?
Reviews
- Starred Review
In this eloquent verse memoir, a young girl’s understanding of home evolves.
Kurtz offers readers a deeply personal vision of her unique childhood. Thanks to her World War II veteran father, a Protestant minister, she was raised in Maji, a small village in the mountains of Ethiopia, where she was home-schooled by her mother. A white girl born in America, young Janie had a happy and full life in Ethiopia. She played with her four sisters, concocted schemes to procure a pet, and reveled in sensory experiences specific to her rural East African childhood—a misty waterfall, aromatic spices, sour breads, and encounters with wild animals. At the same time, she remained conscious of her parents’ concerns, especially her mother’s anxiousness as her belly grew with a new pregnancy. Jane, in turn, began to worry that change was imminent—and it was soon confirmed that the family would return to America for a year. The memoir’s latter half chronicles their long journey to their temporary home in Idaho, where Jane entered third grade and experienced a deep sense of displacement: “In Boise, / I look like I belong. / I sound like I belong. / But I’m different, too. / Different on the inside.” Free verse perfectly captures Janie’s thought processes—wistful, scattered, at once self-centered and keenly attuned to others’ emotions. This youthful perspective makes Kurtz’s recollections from years ago feel fresh and immediate.
A buoyant, beautiful explication of cultural adjustment as seen through a child’s eyes. (Verse memoir. 8-12)
