What You Need to Be Warm

 

Title: What You Need to Be Warm

Author: Neil Gaiman (Author); Yuliya Gwilym et al. (Illustrators)

 

Publisher: Quill Tree Books

 

Format: Book

 

Publication Date: October 31, 2023

 

Grade Level: PreK through 3rd Grade

 

Category: Poetry

 

Neil Gaiman wrote this poem after asking his followers on social media to share their memories of being warm. He crafted this poem from their answers, ending with the powerful message to migrants everywhere: "You have the right to be here." This book is a challenging yet gentle introduction to the refugee crisis that will be appropriate for a younger audience. I chose this book for review because I've been a long-time fan of Neil Gaiman, but I've never read any of his poems before, let alone a children's poem. I thought this was a great one to start with!

Illustrations. Over ten artists from around the world illustrated What You Need to Be Warm. This gives each page a different artistic style, but every illustrations is tied together by the black, white, gray, and warm orange color palette. The dark blacks and grays give the drawings an intense, almost foreboding feeling to them which is then offset by the cozy, fire-reminiscent oranges. It's as if the colors say, "The world can be dark and scary, but here there is warmth, safety, and comfort." 

Mood. What You Need to Be Warm is a heartwarming (excuse my pun), thought-provoking book. The themes of social justice and the refugee crisis means that the book isn't all warm and fuzzy (again, pardon the pun), and has a lot of substantive content that will give readers something to chew on. But overall, the book will leave you feeling cozy and compassionate.

Style and Language. What You Need to Be Warm is written in free verse, the twelve stanzas providing vivid, relatable details on what warmth means to different people. The lines are short and simple, without much flourish, what I might describe as "comfort food" poetry. But there is also a lot of cleverness as well, and deeper meanings hidden in wordplay that one might catch on a second or third read. One such line I savored which was describing a migrants journey to a new land: "changes of state / and state / and state / to stumble across / a stony desert." I had to pause and reflect on the multiple meanings of the word "state" in this line. 

References:

Gaiman, N., (2023). What You Need to Be Warm (C. Riddell, B. Davies, Y. Gwilym, N. Kaadan, P. Smy, D. Egnéus,  P. Horáček, B. Suzanna, B. Ibatoulline, M. Harel, M. Adin,  R. Jones, & O. Jeffers, Illus.). Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.