The War in Ukraine, Part Two – Cover Reveal: A Star Shines Through by Anna Desnitskaya

Today marks the second post commemorating the fact that two years ago today Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Yesterday we looked at a wordless Ukrainian picture book that was released in 2023. Today we are revealing the cover of a picture book not available until August of 2024. A Star Shines Through by Anna Desnitskaya is fiction but was inspired by Anna’s family’s real-life experience emigrating to Israel (then Montenegro) from Russia upon the outbreak of the Ukrainian War. You may remember Anna from the truly original and beautiful picture book On the Edge of the World released by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers just last year (and included in my 31 Days, 31 Lists roundup of 2023 Unconventional Children’s Books).

In remembrance of the day that this author/illustrator first received the news of the escalation, please take a moment to read the Author’s Note from Anna that accompanies her latest:

AUTHOR’S NOTE

For my entire life, I lived in Moscow, and I cannot describe how much I love that city. It’s a city where I have always felt at home.

On February 17, 2022, my children and I went to Cyprus for a week: a gift for my son’s tenth birthday. For a whole week, we had a wonderful vacation—we enjoyed the blooming trees, the sea, and the sun after an icy February in Moscow. We swam, rode bicycles across the hills, and explored ancient ruins. On February 24, we were supposed to fly back home. At six in the morning, my youngest daughter started whimpering and fussing; I got up to feed her, glanced at my phone’s screen, and saw that it was filled with notifications: “Russia has launched an invasion of Ukraine,” “Russia is shelling Kyiv with ballistic missiles,” “Russian troops have landed in Odessa.” At that moment, I realized that we would not be going back home.

Since then, my husband and I, our three children, our cat, and our dog (the animals arrived later) have been searching for our home. It turns out that emigration is very difficult and challenging. Even in the most wonderful places, everything feels so different, and you feel like a stranger to yourself.

In Moscow, cardboard stars adorned the windows of our house: they were always visible from
afar. When we found ourselves in Israel, in a tiny and uncozy rental apartment, the first thing I
bought was the same star we had back home. We placed it in the window, and I realized that the place became a bit less foreign to us. And I also realized that I wanted to write a book about it. This book was a part of my farewell to my home: when I finished it, I understood that our former life had irreversibly ended.

But now we are all together—my husband, our children, our animals, and me—and the star is in the window. We slowly settled into a new home, and then another, and then we moved to another country, taking the star with us.

— ANNA DESNITSKAYA

A thank you to Anna for sharing this note. And the cover:

Thanks too to Amy Burton Storey and the good folks at Eerdmans for sharing this cover reveal with us today. A Star Shines Through is out on shelves everywhere on shelves August 20th. Be sure to look for it then.

Filed under: Cover Reveal