In the Campbellian journey, people leave the Ordinary World to travel to a Special World and return to the Ordinary World transformed in some way. In this chapter, we examine the first phase of this journey. We discuss the main characters of refugee stories and the almost exclusive representation of children as central figures. We also analyse how the Ordinary World is represented and query how story worlds relate to the real world. This is followed by an examination of the Call to Journey and Refusals of the Call. The final section discusses the characters moving into the Special World or what Campbell and Vogler called ‘Crossing the Threshold’. The chapter argues that the children’s picture books about refugees, whether presented as stories of particular places or times or not, are narratives of human transformation and specifically children’s transformations.