Babou’s Journey

Babou’s Kingdom

When everything is lost, imagination becomes a place to survive.

Ten-year-old Babou is forced to run when war reaches his home.

Separated from his family and surrounded by danger he cannot fully understand, he retreats into the kingdom of his imagination. Soldiers become warriors, rebels become soul-seekers and the destruction around him becomes an attack on the kingdom only King Babou can save.

But the danger outside his imagination is very real.

Along the way, Babou meets Tim—another child caught in the chaos—and the two form a brotherly bond as they try to reach the border and find safety.

Babou’s cracked crown becomes a reminder of the world he has lost, the family he hopes to find again and the kingdom he refuses to abandon.

Can imagination give Babou enough courage to reach the other side?

The Other Side

Reaching safety is not the same as feeling safe.

Babou and Tim have crossed the border.

The fighting may now be behind them, but life on the other side is nothing like Babou imagined.

There is waiting.
Questions.
Crowded places full of strangers.
Adults making decisions he does not understand.
And still no sign of his family.

Babou begins to discover that escaping war is only one part of becoming displaced. Now he must live with uncertainty, grief and the difficult reality of being a child without the people who once made every important decision for him.

As days become weeks, Babou searches for information about his family while trying to understand the unfamiliar systems around him.

Who can he trust?
Where does he belong?
And how long can you keep believing that the people you love are alive when nobody can tell you where they are?

Tim remains beside him, but both boys carry losses of their own.

Babou’s imagined kingdom is changing too. It was once somewhere he went to feel powerful. Now even King Babou must face something he cannot defeat with an army: not knowing.

The Other Side explores survival after escape, grief, displacement, bureaucracy, identity, friendship and the fragile persistence of hope.

Can Babou keep believing his family is alive without losing himself along the way?

The Path

What happens when your greatest hope becomes someone else’s weapon?

Babou has one wish that has never changed.

He wants to find his family.

When someone finally appears to offer information—perhaps even a way of reaching them—it feels like the answer Babou has been waiting for.

But desperate hope can make people vulnerable.

Babou and Tim are drawn into the world of people smugglers and traffickers who understand exactly what Babou wants to hear.

There are promises of routes, contacts and people who can help.
Promises that somewhere further ahead there may be answers.

Babou begins another journey. This time the path leads towards Europe.

But unlike the road he escaped along in the first book, the danger ahead is hidden behind people pretending to help.

As Babou is pushed further from everything familiar, he must begin to understand the difference between trusting someone and needing desperately to believe them.

His imagination once transformed danger into monsters he could recognise.

But what happens when the monsters look ordinary?

The Path explores exploitation, trafficking, manipulation, migration, trust and the dangers faced by children travelling without the protection of family.

And throughout it all remains the question that keeps Babou moving:

What if his family really is somewhere ahead?

Unaccompanied Minor

What happens after the journey everyone thinks is over?

Babou and Tim arrive in the United Kingdom.

They have reached the place that, for so long, represented safety.

But arrival brings another unfamiliar world.

Social workers.
Interviews.
Forms.
Schools.
New homes.
A new language and culture to understand.

People ask Babou to explain what happened to him when sometimes he would rather forget.

For the first time in a long while, Babou may be physically safe. But belonging is something different.

He must learn how to become part of a new community while carrying memories of another home, another life and the family whose fate he still does not know.

As Babou grows older, questions about identity become harder to ignore.

Where is home now?
Can he belong to somewhere new without betraying where he came from?
What happens to King Babou when he no longer needs an imaginary kingdom simply to survive?
And can the bond between Babou and Tim survive yet another new world?

Unaccompanied Minor explores arrival, identity, belonging, asylum, childhood without parents, friendship, integration and the complicated meaning of home.

Babou has travelled further than the child who once ran from the sound of gunfire could ever have imagined. But his most important question remains unanswered.

Can Babou build a new life while still carrying everything—and everyone—he lost?