Globe & Mail review for Call Me Aram!

I was THRILLED to see this Susan Perrin review today in the Globe & Mail:

CALL ME ARAM

By Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, illustrated by Muriel Woods, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 88 pages, $18.95, ages 8 to 11

A sequel to Aram’s Choice (2006), Skrypuch’s Call Me Aram takes up Aram’s story, based on a true one, as he and a group of Armenian boys, survivors of the genocide that occurred in Turkey in 1915, arrive in Georgetown, Ont., to begin a new life.

After the murder of his parents in Turkey, Aram and his grandmother had scrounged a living by begging on the streets of Ankara. He and thousands of other children were then moved from Turkey to an orphanage on Corfu.

Sponsored by the newly formed Armenian Relief Association of Canada, 100 boys, among them Aram, travelled to Canada in 1923, their destination a farm where they would be cared for, educated and trained to be farm helpers. These boys came to be known as the Georgetown Boys.

Skrypuch’s tale is an affecting one, made even more so by artist Woods’s limpid paintings of the bucolic Canadian farmland. The boys’ experiences in and their reactions to their new country and home are revealed via Aram’s eyes and voice: the disgust with which they greet the gooey mess of porridge, their breakfast; their disbelief when they are given new, Canadian names – those of individuals who have sponsored them; their bewilderment about new customs like bed-making; and their relief when a kind Canadian of Armenian descent comes to stay with them and explicates their new world for them.

As this book ends, Aram declares, ” ‘My name is Aram Davidian. And I am a Canadian.’ He would never get tired of saying that.”

Appended are archival photographs of the Georgetown Boys, a historical note and lists of suggested reading, Internet sites and films.

Author: Marsha

I write historical fiction, mostly from the perspective of young people who are thrust in the midst of war. View all posts by Marsha