Writing on their lived experiences as refugees and immigrants from countries all across the world, these writers reflect on their pasts as they share their stories. These authors write about monkeys hanging from fruit trees, family feasts, mountains, war, snowstorms, and all other parts of life.

— Simon Traub-Epstein, International Library of Young Authors

From the publisher: “‘Can you tell me what home means?’ writes Iraqi-born poet Ibrahim Shkara. For Clautel Buba from Cameroon, home is a house built of bricks formed from warm clay by small hands. For Michée Runyambo, it is an uncles shelter for family and friends as war breaks out in Congo. For Ralph Houanche from Haiti, it is the unspoken rules in a game of soccer. For Fadumo Issack, it is the tall tree she climbs in a refugee camp in Kenya. For Amira Al Sammrai from Iraq, it is a small patch of sky. For Richard Akera, who is Sudanese but never lived in South Sudan, home is where he feels safe and loved. The thirty pieces of poetry and prose in A Season for Building Houses open a window onto today's immigrant and refugee experience. Along their journeys to new homes in the United States, the teenage writers in this collection explore what it is to belong and to lose, to experience danger and safety, to remember and forget, and to build home after home.