Book Report : I AM MALALA

This book is called I AM MALALA, written by Malala Yousafzai. So, it is an autobiography. Malala is a world changer and this is her story. She is born in Pakistan, Mingora and is a Pashtun from birth. She, unlike other girls, is very lucky and has a very supportive father who owns a school. Suddenly, a man named Fazlullah starts talking about stopping girls from going to school and keeping women at home on the radio. Then, one day, when she sees children working at the garbage dump instead of being at school, she realizes that she has to do something about it. Malala and her school friends are always talking about what they heard on the radio and get really scared when something even worse happens. Fazlullah forms the Taliban and starts doing bad stuff to women in Afghanistan. He has now said that women should not be allowed out of the house without a known male accompanying her.  If they went out without a male relative, or without wearing a proper burqa (a top to bottom black dress), he and his followers threw acid on their face! Malala is now really upset and when she starts to see that the Taliban have come to Mingora and are putting banners up which are stopping women from coming out of their houses without a male person, she starts to talk to God and asks Him about how she can help. One day, Malala wakes up and has an idea. She will ignore the chat about the Taliban and instead talk about the things girls her age should be talking about, like, TV shows, friends and what I’m going to do on the weekend etc. But now the Taliban is becoming even crueler: they are scolding women if they don’t wear a burqa and they are beating up men if they are not accompanying their wife and daughter. Mingora was becoming an unsafe place! One of Malala’s father’s friends in the news channel BBC now wants a girl to write a journal about how she feels about the Taliban and how her life is. Malala is keen on it and gets a pseudonym: Gul Makai a Pashtun folktale character. One day, Malala’s father finds a note on the door of his room saying ‘Close down this school otherwise you know what we can do!’ Malala’s father wrote back ‘Please don’t kill my students. You can hurt me but not my students.’ Malala has now had many interviews and has the chance to talk against the Taliban and she says that the only thing she wants is for girls to have a right to learn, have good education and grow up to be whatever they want to be. Little did she know that the Taliban was hearing all this and following her. Soon, she became a target for the Taliban and on the bus, on the way home, she got shot right near the brain. Malala declares that she doesn’t remember any of it: the shooting, bleeding, going to 4 different hospitals, none of it. Instantly, Malala was moved to a hospital in Mingora, which said that she needed special treatments to be done. Then she was moved to Peshawar. There, there happened to be two special doctors, Dr. Fiona and Dr. Javid. She was moved to Rawalpindi and then to Birmingham, England to the ‘Queen Elizabeth Hospital’. When Malala woke up she couldn’t speak because there was a tube in her throat. She received a pink notebook and a white teddy bear. The pink notebook was to write all her questions and what she wanted to say and the teddy bear was to comfort her. Malala couldn’t hear properly, was seeing double, couldn’t close her left eye, couldn’t move her left hand and whenever she shook her head had an intense pain there. After a long time in the hospital, she was a little bit stronger and her sight was much better. The doctors inserted a small hearing device in her ear so that she could hear better and she started to live in Birmingham with her family. One afternoon, in the middle of her physics lesson, the headmistress called her outside and Malala thought ‘what happened? Am I in trouble?’. In fact, she was not in trouble at all! She had won the Nobel Prize along with one other man. That was when she realized how much her teachers in Birmingham cared for her because they had tears in their eyes. Malala was invited to talk to the whole school and even before that to the UN! Malala now is on many news channels and still has speeches and interviews. E.g.: She had one with Christian Amanpour on CNN and with many other people. Malala is such a strong person, a world changer!

What I like about the b0ok:

• I was so hooked on to the book that I finished it in one day! It is a very inspiring book to me.
• I find it a co-incidence that the lesson Malala found in the ‘Wizard Of Oz’ book is the lesson that I found in this book: if you really want to do something, you will get to it even with the hurdles on your way.
• Isn’t it amazing how a child, especially a child, can have the courage to speak up against such a bad group when it is that sort of time when what is going to happen next is unpredictable?
• She must have had such a hard life doing chores at home in Mingora and managing to keep her cool with her ‘annoying brothers’ etc. But I think the hardest part of her life was when the Taliban said that they were forced to shoot her because she was speaking against them. But in spite of this they continued to not let women do what they want in their own free will.
• What I find unfair about what they are doing is that they are saying it is part of their religion when actually it’s not.
• I know this is not part of what I learnt but I was amazed at how good her description was. I could almost imagine how her bedroom looked like and how the alley where she played cricket looked like and other things she described looked like.
• I would love to meet MalalaJ! Since I read this book by myself, my mum and I had a chat about it and I landed up asking myself ‘what would I do if I had the opportunity like Malala? I said all sorts of different things but I couldn’t get to one that would change the world. If you did something like Malala, what would it be?

I would give this book a 9 out of 10 rating.

FIND OUT WHAT I MEAN BY READING I AM MALALA!

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE ON AMAZON FOR $8.44 and HERE ON GUARDIAN BOOKSHOP FOR £6.39

Note : This Review was first published at the Guardian Teen Books site

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Book Report : BALLET SHOES

This book is called BALLET SHOES, written by Noel Streatfeild. It is about 3 orphan girls who are adopted by a man named Matthew. The girls call him G.U.M for Great Uncle Matthew. Gum collects fossils and other things on his travels. Cook, Clara, Nana and Sylvia all live and work with him. After Gum gives the children to Nana for her to take care of, he leaves enough money for them for 5 years and goes away travelling for a very long time. The three girls, Pauline (the oldest), Petrova and Posy (the youngest) all have different dreams. Posy is a born dancer and Pauline is an actress. But sporty Petrova would rather study planes than do a pirouette because she is more interested in vehicles and how they work. Nana enrolls them into the academy called ‘The Academy of Dance and Stage Training’. Posy is very happy and so is Pauline but Petrova is very bored and so when she is free, takes her book of vehicles and studies it. Pauline acts in many different plays. Some include: Blue bird, A Midsummer Night’s dream and Richard the Third. Long ago, the Fossil family (Pauline, Petrova and Posy) made a vow to put their names in history books and they repeated this vow whenever it was each other’s birthday. One day, Pauline gets an invitation to go to Hollywood in America and Posy to train with a very famous male ballet dancer because some professional at each of their talents had seen them dance\act. Now they are getting one step closer to putting their names in history books! Petrova is the only one left without an invitation. Suddenly, Gum comes back and it happens to be that he is also very good at working with vehicles and studying them! Now, Petrova has something to look forward to. She and the other 2 girls make their last vows of putting their names into history books and then say their goodbyes. I wonder what they are going to do next!

What I like about this book:

·   It is an interesting book since it is written in 1936. And, it is pretty different from stories we have today. In those days, there weren’t any electronic gadgets, there were only typewriters! They had teatime etc. and followed a strict schedule and were demanded down in a strict way even if they were doing something important like homework. These days, we don’t say “OK everyday at 5:30 PM we will take a walk” right? In this book, Nana and the girls take walks everyday other than the days they are sick or not feeling well! Although it was very interesting reading it, I can’t imagine my life being that rigid. Can you?

·   The lesson that I found in the book is: follow your dreams! As each of the girls did. Made me think: if I had to be one of the three, I would be Pauline. I love acting but my second choice is definitely Petrova because she is sporty like me and even though I am not that interested in planes, I enjoyed reading about the engines and cars! If you had to choose, which one would you be?

I would give this a 7 out of 10 rating!

FIND OUT WHAT I MEAN BY READING BALLET SHOES!

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE FOR $6.29 ON AMAZON OR HERE FOR £5.59 AT THE GUARDIAN BOOKSHOP

Book Report : DOLL BONES

This book is called DOLL BONES, written by Holly Black. It is about three kids named Poppy, Alice and Zach who love playing with dolls. But, the three are in middle school now and Zach’s dad is pushing Zach to join the basketball team and quit girls and dolls. Zach ignores his dad and doesn’t think that his dad will do anything until Zach’s dad throws away all Zach’s toys and gives Zach no choice. Zach quits playing with dolls but lies about the reason. Poppy and Alice continue playing but are suspicious about the reason Zach quit. Poppy and Alice are happy and continue playing until...  Poppy opens her eyes one night and declares that she is having dreams about a girl who is mysteriously murdered and is made into a doll because she is loved so much by her father. The doll desperately wants to be buried. This is the story of the doll: A few years ago there was a girl named Eleanor Kerchner and her father was a sculptor. Her father made all sorts of lovely things like vases and stuff but he loved Eleanor most and never wanted to see her die. But, one day Eleanor was mysteriously murdered and Eleanor’s father came to know. He was so sad that he decided that he was going to use her ashes and bones to make a doll representing Eleanor.  Poppy’s mum bought the doll years ago and never let anybody touch it. Poppy and her friends were scared of it for a while but they decided to add it to their game to make them less scared. The doll becomes the queen of the game and sits in her case watching over everything. But now Poppy takes it out and explains everything to Alice. Scared, they both wake Zach up and tell him about it. Zach agrees to help so long as the girls don’t talk about the reason he quit and they all start to East Liverpool, Ohio since that is the doll’s preference (to be buried). On the way to East Liverpool, Ohio, they have many adventures but I won’t tell you all. All I will say is ‘Watch out for the crazy man!’ Meanwhile, Alice starts to doubt Poppy and thinks that she made all of this up just to be bossy and to get them to do what she wants. It is only when people think that the doll is an actual person – for example, whenever the three go into restaurants, the managers ask if they need a table for 4 people and not three - that Alice realizes that everything was true and she makes up with Poppy. Spooky isn’t it?! I wonder why this happened to them? Has the doll possessed them with her looks and ash?’. Anyways, they land up in a library trying to find the place to bury the doll but somebody or someone takes the doll when they go to sleep and throws it away. The trio looks for her in the morning but the librarian finds them and makes them call their parents! Each child talks with their parent and is told to come back home. Only, the three still have sometime. Zach, Alice and Poppy split up to find the doll and Zach finds the doll in a dustbin and takes her back. Poppy is so happy and gives each of them a job. Alice looks for flowers, Poppy starts to say bye to the doll and Zach digs the grave. Straight after burying the doll, a few honks are heard and the book ends with the three friends walking, relieved, to their cars. The doll won’t trouble them forever now. Or... will it?!

What I like about the book is:

• The spookiness of it all. It made me have goose bumps! I wonder how Holly Black got the inspiration to write a story about a creepy doll.
• I admire Holly Black, she is such a good writer and like the language she uses. She really gets the reader (or me) involved.
• She makes some pretty interesting characters too. If you read The Spiderwick Chronicles you’ll see what I mean.
• When I finished reading Doll bones, I found myself writing a book literally based on Doll bones but just including different characters. I didn’t finish the book though (I thought it was copying so I didn’t continue).
• Actually, when I finished reading the book I felt a little scared every night because I thought that maybe the doll would come to me. That just proves that the author did a very good job in writing the story.
• One of the things that I also found interesting was the way she added in the secrets and made the story like a mysterious – like the part with the crazy man!
• One of my favorite parts was at the end when Zach asks Alice out and then they become ‘close friends’.

I WOULD GIVE THIS BOOK A 10 OUT OF 10 RATING!

FIND OUT WHAT I MEAN BY READING ‘DOLL BONES’! YOU CAN BUY IT HERE FOR $5.13 ON AMAZON OR HERE FOR £5.59 AT THE GUARDIAN BOOKSHOP

This review first appeared on the GuardianChildren's books site