Jasmine Warga, an alum of the Power of the Pen team at Wyoming Middle School, received a 2020 Newbery Honor for her third book, Other Words for Home. A novel in verse, Other Words for Home tells the story of a young girl who must move from her home in Syria to Cincinnati, Ohio. In the author's note for the novel, Jasmine says that one of the reasons she wrote this book is to help readers understand that children fleeing from war zones "want the same things all of us do - love, understanding, safety, a chance at happiness."
Jessica P. Wick, who reviewed the book for NPR, highly recommends it as a relatable and vital read for middle grade students: “There are so many reasons to read this novel. It’s a book about kindness, for one; it sings, for another, as any good verse novel should . . . It feels true. It feels like middle school and wanting things the way you do in middle school. It feels like being in the middle of so many things and not quite knowing how to navigate that uncertainty.”
Jasmine is also the author of My Heart and Other Black Holes and Here We Are Now. Her fourth book, The Shape of Thunder, is coming out in spring 2021.