It is modern day Pakistan and this is exactly what happens to Amal, a headstrong and ambitious young girl. She dreams of becoming a teacher, but instead she must now go and live at the estate of the Khan family, the rulers of her village. The head of the family is a cruel man, feared by everyone, and this is the person that Amal mistakenly disrespected at the market when she refused to let him order her around. As a punishment, she is taken from home and forced to be a servant in order to pay off her family’s debts. How will she be treated? How long will she have to stay? What kind of labor will she be forced to do? Amal soon enters a world that is not quite what she expected and she relies on her strength of character and determination to get herself through. (New Hampshire Great Stone Face Book Award nominee, 2020)

Booktalk #2

Amal dreams of being a teacher, but she soon discovers that for a girl in Pakistan, an education is not guaranteed. When her mother sinks into postpartum depression after the birth of her baby sister, 12-year-old Amal is pulled out of school to take care of her home and her two young sisters. Frustrated by this and the fact that everyone else seems so disappointed that the baby wasn’t a boy, Amal lapses into a moment carelessness, after which her life changes forever. She is forced to live as an indentured servant in the household of the village landlord, but before long she uncovers the depth of the family’s corruption. Amal must then weigh the risk of trying to expose their treachery in a small village where girls are not always believed and their dreams are not always honored.   (Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award 2019 - 2020)

Booktalk#3

Growing up in Pakistan, Amal loves going to school and has dreams of one day becoming a teacher. When her mother gives birth to yet another daughter, Amal’s father pulls her out of school to help care for the family. Amal is angry, and she wonders if she were a boy if her father would be so careless with her education. One day at the local market, Amal is nearly run over by a car. Quick-witted and opinionated, Amal stands up for herself to the driver, and before she knows it, her sharp tongue lands her in indentured servitude with her community’s most feared landlord. Now living in a home where her only value is to serve this evil man and his family, Amal must figure out how to free herself and return home to her family. (Oklahoma Sequoyah Book Awards, 2020)

Booktalk #4
Can you imagine your life dream taken away in an instant?  That is what happens to Amal, a 12-year-old girl from Pakistan.  She is working towards her goal of becoming a teacher.  She is a hard-working student who volunteers to stay after school to help her teacher with daily chores and observes her teacher’s work of planning and revising lessons.  When her mother becomes sick after giving birth to the fourth daughter, Amal must stay home to take care of her sisters.  Amal pleads with her parents to let her return to school, but her parents need her help at home.  Her father is desperately trying to hold onto their family’s small farm.  Many of their neighbors have taken loans from the village loan shark, the Kahn family, and are surviving from crop-to-crop in order to stay afloat of their debt.  Amal’s mother and father have resisted borrowing money they might be unable to repay.  One day while visiting the market, Amal is hit by a car.  She argues with the driver, not knowing that he is in the Kahn family.  He visits Amal’s home the next week, and her family learns that the last crop was so bad that her father owes the Kahn family, too.  The Kahns expect Amal to repay her family’s debt with a seven-year sentence of indentured service.   How will she ever get a chance to return to school and become a teacher?   (Prepared by:Carrie Shoolbred, Jesse Boyd Elementary School, ceshoolbred@spart7.org)  (South Carolina Book Awards, 2020-2021)

Booktalk #5

“How could everything as solid as the earth my grandfather fought for crumble so easily beneath my feet?”

This gripping story of a young girl in Pakistan will capture your heart. Amal dreams of being a teacher until one careless action on her part results in indentured servitude to her village’s notorious landlord. Life there is more challenging than anything she has ever experienced. How can she survive while living as a servant in that evil man’s house? How can her dreams ever find flight again? (Book Talk by Sherri Ashlock, Nelsen Middle School ) (Washington Evergreen Book Award nominee 2021)