Like Water on Stone by Dana Walrath is fictional account of the Armenian genocide. This novel in verse recounts the flight to America of three Armenian children after the Ottoman Turks confiscate their family’s flour mill and murder their parents. For sixty-three days the children travel on foot, above the tree line of the Caucasus Mountains and through the Syrian Desert, to reach refuge in Aleppo, Syria. Taken in by a sympathetic Arab shopkeeper, the children disguise themselves as Arabs to avoid being forcibly relocated to the Deir el-Zor concentration camp, where starvation and barbarity led to certain death. After three years in hiding, the children finally receive a letter and boat tickets to America from their keri (maternal uncle).

The book’s Educator’s Guide was created for Random House by Judith Turner, a longtime educator at Terrace Community Middle School in Tampa, Florida. It includes pre-reading activities, discussion and activity prompts and a list of Common Core Standards correlations.