The Day of the Pelican

The Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson was an interesting read, alerting me to a worldly conflict I’d never even heard of before. An Albanian Kosovar, Meli, tells the story of how their family fled their homeland from the Serbs, and eventually looked to America for a new beginning. The book was slightly confusing for me at first, as I had no background knowledge of that area of the world, but ultimately, I think it may have been more effective to read the book with that ignorance—The Day of the Pelican was narrated by a young girl, who did not know much more than I about why she was being attacked. My only complaint of the book is that everything seemed to go unrealistically wrong, but perhaps that was reality for some Albanian families. I found it interesting to learn that the book was based on an actually family, that was taken in by Vermonters, just as Meli’s family was. Further, I was surprised that the book portrayed the family’s welcomers in America as slightly inhospitable and unaware of Albanian culture, because Paterson learned about the family from these same people. I’m glad to have read this book, for it made me aware of horrible events that occurred in my life time, if not shortly before.