Even before going into this book I had some doubts about it and unfortunately they only got confirmed. I only pushed my way through it because I already had it standing on my bookshelf at home and I unfortunately haven’t checked its reviews before buying it. I’m rating this book with 1/5 ★ because I strongly believe that it should not get more attention than it already received. I can see how it could be naively read by non-Ukrainian readers, not noticing specific nuances and aspects that are very critical about it. There is a myriad of reasons why this book should not have been published, so let me go into a couple of them.

1. There were phrases within it that read like pro-Russian propaganda. Even though some might argue that the author is 12 years old, that she can’t reflect enough on her own thoughts and the things that she hears in the media, it is the responsibility of the publishing house and the editor to get the nuances right out of moral responsibility. Passages like the ones below made me wince while reading them:

We’re hearing that other countries are now proposing sanctions, while refusing to send more weapons. In some ways, that might be for the best …

p. 42

Then, we learned that Ukrainian tanks and APCs are stationed between apartment buildings. We are worried we’ll end up being used as human shields.

p. 47

I want so badly for all of this to be over and for there to be peace between Russia and Ukraine.

p. 197

These kind of statements are extremely triggering to Ukrainians. Even though they could be open to interpretation, could pass for childlike naïveté but they are extremely dangerous if the author is taken as an ambassador of the “Ukrainian opinion”. It’s even worse to present them within a childrens’ book, where children might simply absorb them, take them as reality and spread such messages further. The phrase that Ukrainians would ever use civilians as live shields hit like the worst level of offense possible. Implying that weapons shouldn’t be sent to Ukraine in order to support the country… The comparison of brotherly nations between Ukraine or Russia or the push towards peace rather than having Russia stop the war and release all occupied Ukrainian territories sounded like concealed propaganda.

2. The title doesn’t really correspond with the content. The author is 12 years old and only spent 13 days in Ukraine since the start of the war before she was able to flee the country with her grandmother. First of all, such an amount of time is nowhere near sufficient in order to give her a full understanding of war and all its intricacies. Second, by putting such an experience in the limelight it diminishes all the issues the majority of Ukrainians are still going through or had to go through when deciding on whether to stay or to go. This girl simply doesn’t know what war is either.

Day 13. We’re Leaving. Our New Life Awaits. Farewell!

p. 135

3. Her story oversimplifies what Ukrainians lived and continue to live through as a result of the war. It is not explicitly mentioned how money plays an enormous role in her having been able to leave the country and it displays the escape in such an easy way, that simply doesn’t correspond with reality for so many others. Due to financial abundance and family connections she was able to leave the country without significant problems not even two full weeks after the start of the war. Even from the personal experience of my family I know how much of an ordeal it was and I would find it offensive if so many readers who have purchased this book would think that Yeva’s experience is actually the norm, while it is far from being it.

We got in the taxi and started talking to the driver – he told us he’s from Donetsk. We asked what the fare was and he said it was free.

p. 100

At last, our train’s arrival was announced. We ran, along with a large crowd of others, towards the platform. We got out on to the platform and tried to make our way to our carriage. It wasn’t easy, but we made it. Yay!

p. 101

We walked through the doors and … there was a crowd of people awaiting our arrival. There were television reporters, our hosts’ friends and family and our hosts themselves – Catherine and Gary. It was a warm welcome.

p. 157

It even made me think of the book “American Dirt” at times, when obviously only the luckiest things happened to the author and her grandma.

We stood there, tears in our eyes, praying. Please let us through. And they did! They said that, even though we didn’t have a consent document from Mum, and even though Granny didn’t have her passport, they would let us through because normal rules don’t apply during war time.

p. 137

4. The book is portrayed to be written by a child which often is just not believable. In the least, it must have been edited by someone and this is not presented in a transparent way. Photos of the girl’s original diary written in Russian were included and the style also didn’t sound like anything a child her age would write like. A translator isn’t stated and there were quite a few mistakes still left within it, that have been completely missed. It therefore felt odd and messy, among others misspelling the Ukrainian currency, including grammatical errors, typos, etc. …

Hryvnia or hryvnya has been the national currency of Ukraine since 1996. The hryvnia is subdivided into 100 kopiyky. The plural of hryvnia is hyrvni.

p. 234

A beautiful big old building designed way back when by Beketov himself.

p. 220

5. The book was too “Russian” in a time when all Ukrainians are making the biggest effort to put the emphasis on anything and everything Ukrainian. The fact that the girl thinks of a Russian writer when going to an Irish library just made me wonder with which underlying political interests this book was written with…

After the museum, we made our way to Trinity College. […] And then we stepped into the library […]. Then, we walked up some stairs and entered a very long library. I had no doubt you could find a few of Pushkin’s poems there (that’s whose name popped into my head when I tried to think of a writer, I don’t know why).

p. 171

6. The way the book was written didn’t make me feel anything. Even though it’s supposed to be a children’s book, I believe that there is still a way of getting things across that awaken some compassion within the reader. For me, it wasn’t emotionally engaging, it rather felt cold and flat. Even when speaking about the most horrible things, the feelings around them seemed to be expressed in an artificial way.

That’s all great, but the Russian occupiers are there now. It’s so sad.

p. 210

This was a real life example of how a story that’s not worth it gets published simply because the person involved with it had the right connections. Even though one might argue that a lot of the opinions are just the ones of an innocent child, I believe that more attention has to be paid to the material published about such a sensitive topic as a currently still ongoing war. The whole book simply felt wrong, like it was this one story (which isn’t even representative of the general Ukrainian refugee experience) which got blown up out of proportion and which was pushed into publishing as quickly as possible to profit off the wave of the news that were ongoing about Ukraine at that time. It seemed like the majority of the positive reviews I saw about this book came from Europeans that don’t have enough insight to notice manipulative details, which would be absolutely evident to someone who’s Ukrainian. This is an absolute suggestion against you reading this book or even supporting it by purchasing a copy of it.

★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-1-5266-59993-4
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022}