By Hena Khan
4RBooks: 5+/6, grades 6-8
Amazon rating: 4.6/5, grade level 3-7
Good Reads: 4.21/5
Common Sense Media: 4/5, age 8+
262 pages
Synopsis:
Jameela is getting ready for the start of the new school year. She will be in 7th grade. A budding journalist, like her grandfather, she is looking forward to writing more stories for the school newspaper. Jameela (13) lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her parents and three sisters, Maryam (15), Bisma (11), and Aleeza (10).
Jameela thinks that the only problem on the horizon is her ongoing conflict with the editor of the newspaper who never seems to like her ideas. Life starts to get complicated when her aunt and uncle’s nephew comes to live with them, Ali (14). He’s cute, funny, and Jameela is assigned a feature story on him for the paper.
Then her father has to take a new job in Abu Dhabi on the other side of the planet. He will be gone for six months. On top of that, the story about Ali accidentally includes information he didn’t want shared and he’s not happy.
But nothing else matters after her sister Bisma becomes ill and receives a scary diagnosis from the doctor. Everything is new now as the family rallies together to support Bisma and each other.
Parental Guidance: medium-low
One of the sisters is diagnosed with cancer. The book details what she goes through in treatment including a PICC line, chemotherapy, and losing her hair.
Recommendation:
This novel is a modern, multicultural, reimagining of the famous book, Little Women. Since I’ve never read the original, I can only review this book on its own merits as a unique novel.
It was excellent. On one level it’s a simple story of a family of four Pakistani-American girls, ages 10-15, living in Atlanta, Georgia. The girls have their unique personalities and relationships, with each other and their friends. Jameela, the first-person narrator of the story is a budding journalist. But then you layer in the drama of a cute new boy from the UK, their father leaving the country for 6 months for a job in Abu Dhabi, and the third sister being diagnosed with cancer, and it becomes a very poignant and emotional story.
The last third of the story is centered on the sister’s cancer diagnosis and the family’s attempts to cope and support her and each other. As such, it would be an excellent book for a child dealing with cancer in their family.
The family is Muslim and one of the stories Jameela wants to write for the school newspaper is about microaggressions. The family talks often about prayer and waiting for God’s (Allah) will to be done.
Because of the age of Jameela, the narrator, and the topic of cancer I would recommend this as a middle school novel. Advance elementary readers would enjoy the story but might need some parent or teacher guidance when confronting the hard realities of children with cancer. It would be great for a group read, especially for pre-teen and early teen girls.
When my wife and I took our fall colors tour last October to Maine and Massachusetts, we visited and toured the family home of Louisa May Alcott, author of the famous novel Little Women. I discovered this book in the souvenir shop attached to the home.
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