Everything Sad is Untrue Book Review

 









1. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nayeri, D. (2009). EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE. Lantern Paperbacks.  ISBN: 978-1-51606-466-3

2.  PLOT SUMMARY

Everything Sad is Untrue is a memoir about Khosrou Daniel Nayeri’s childhood. Mixing real-life events with Persian storytelling, Daniel takes readers on a journey of discrimination, bullying, harassment, and a desire to fit in while living as a refugee in Oklahoma. 


 3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The characters in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon are authentic and representative of the Persian culture in several ways. Daniel and his family live in Iran when he was a young child. When his mom converts to Christianity, there is a bounty on her head so she takes the children with her. Their dad stays behind. The Islamic religion is mentioned when Daniel recalls prayers and Mohammed. 

The setting in this story jumps from Iran to Oklahoma for most of the book. Daniel is born in Iran but immigrates to Oklahoma during his childhood. The stories he tells take place in Persian places; real and make believe. 

Storytelling and symbolism are big traditions of Persians, and Daniel tells well-known tales to readers and classmates in Oklahoma. There are many references to One Thousand and One Nights, which is a popular Arabic folktale.  Iranian words and phrases are interwoven into the text. For example the food mentioned are persimmon cookies, saffron, his mom’s cream puffs, and a candy bar that is similar to a mounds bar. 

Family is central in this culture. Daniel speaks about his grandfather who owns a farm in Iran, his grandmother who fled after attempting to kill her husband, and stories about these larger than life characters. His mom and sister are his world in Oklahoma and he wants to protect them. When Ray, his stepfather, abuses his mother. Daniel and his sister try to protect her socially and physically. 


4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

  • Booklist starred, 07/01/20

  • Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books starred, 07/01/20

  • Horn Book Magazine, 11/01/20

  • Kirkus Reviews starred, 05/15/20

  • Michael L. Printz Award, 2021

  • New York Times, 09/06/20

  • Publishers Weekly starred, 06/15/20

  • School Library Journal starred, 07/01/20

Full-Text Reviews
Booklist starred (July 2020 (Vol. 116, No. 21))

Grades 7-12. “A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee.” It’s with this refrain that 12-year-old Khosrou, known as Daniel to his skeptical Oklahoman classmates, tells “a version” of his life story. In the tradition of 1,001 Nights’ Scheherazade, he gathers up the loose strands of his memory, weaving short personal vignettes into the Persian histories, myths, and legends that are his ancestry. The result is a winding series of digressions that takes the reader on a journey as intimate as it is epic, knitting together a tale of Daniel’s youth in Iran, the perilous flight from home with his sister and mother, and their oppressive new beginning as refugees in Oklahoma. It’s a story heavy with loss (of home, of his left-behind father, of innocence), light with humor and love (for his mother, the “unstoppable force”), rich in culture and language (and, somehow, never sentimental). Walking the line between fiction and non-, this is a kind of meta-memoir, a story about the stories that define us. It’s a novel, narrated conversationally—and poetically—by a boy reaching for the truth in his fading youth. Nayeri challenges outright what young readers can handle, in form and content, but who can deny him when it’s his own experience on display? He demands much of readers, but in return he gives them everything. A remarkable work that raises the literary bar in children’s lit.


  • 5. CONNECTIONS

Related Books:


Eager, L. (2017). HOUR OF THE BEES. Candlewick Press.  ISBN: 978-0-7636-9120-2

Behar, R. (2017). ACROSS SO MANY SEAS. Thorndike Press.  ISBN:  978-88-85799-49-2


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