A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea (Young Readers' Edition): The Journey of Doaa Al Zamel: One Teen Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival Paperback – December 31, 2018

This book gives us a heartbreaking sense of what the Syrian people are going through. It reads well (I flew through it).It's no wonder that Steven Spielberg scooped up the rights and is going to partner with J.J. Abrams to make it into a movie!And you follow the story, you'll be educated about the Assad regime, the 2011 revolution and the refugee crisis - so it's a history lesson, as well.I think we often skim news articles about Syria, shake our heads and go "wow, that's a tragedy" and then move on. This personalizes everything and sticks with you. Doaa (the book's protagonist) is a badass.

I could not put the book down and read within a day. The book displays phenomenal human strength and courage from different people. I highly recommend.

Refugees are always in the news and we so rarely know their stories. I chose this book to get personal insight into a humanitarian crisis. It didn’t let me down. Doaa has an amazing story of survival - just when you think it can’t get any worse it does - and it’s incomprehensibke that she could have prevailed. The writing is rather flat and too basic to be gripping but facts are facts and I stuck with it. The end of the book explains it was written by a UN official and refugee advocate who did a TED talk about Doaa and then put in an incredible amount of work to bring the book to life. Knowing that, I give her big kudos.

This book should be required reading for every high school teen taking classes in world government. It's also a book anyone should read who would like to have a better understanding of the refugee crisis and what has happened in Syria. The author describes the incredible personal and emotional cost for the families being displaced... The story is both heartbreaking and inspiring.

Told from the point of view of one family, this book beautifully paints a picture of Syria before and during the protests that threatened the Bashaar regime. These protests, though peaceful to begin with, became violent when the Syrian military killed peaceful protesters began using tear gas, and then bullets, to deter protesters. As an all out war broke out in Syria, many became refugees.This is the story of one such family. As you read, you learn what a typical Syrian family is like--an insight into the family organization and values.Their journey to Egypt is one of the earlier ones and is in stark contrast to those that came later. Reading about Doaa and her fiancé and their desire to build a better future is a story we can all connect with--and the lengths they go to to get there are lengths many of us would go to as well. To be free, to leave a war torn country behind, to find work and make a good and honest living, to support an extended family....these are honorable dreams.What happens next is horrific and no one deserves the massacre that follows. I finished this book after reading several they books (mostly focusing on refugee camps) and am now, more than ever, moved to do more for refugees in my country and abroad. My heart goes out to Doaa and millions like her. I am thankful for this book and the way it was written--a story told to open hearts and minds.

A valuable, though impossibly hard read, for anyone wishing insight into the impact of the Syrian war. The story of Doaa gives this war its voice, in Syria and elsewhere. A story that is no longer 'out there' , or about 'others', but could well be the defining story of our time, where all are drawn into its narrative. In this story, borders between countries, mindsets, and hearts, need to urgently be challenged and creatively redefined if we are to continue to call ourselves human.

This book does a lot of things very well: impart empathy onto the reader, tell the story of someone who endured incredible loss with incredible bravery, and allow the reader to step inside someone else's shoes and consider what they would've done in their situation. Though the prose is a tiny bit clunky, the plot is so astounding that I still tore through this book in less than a week.

I couldn’t put this book down- it is hard and sad and powerful and I can’t stop thinking about it. Definitely recommend.