On a military base in post-Taliban Afghanistan, American authorities have just imprisoned a teenaged girl found in a bombed-out school. The army major thinks she may be a terrorist working with the Taliban. The girl does not respond to questions in any language and remains silent, even when she is threatened, harassed and mistreated over several days. The only clue to her identity is a tattered shoulder bag containing papers that refer to people named Shauzia, Nooria, Leila, Asif, Hassan — and Parvana. In this long-awaited sequel to The Breadwinner Trilogy, Parvana is now fifteen years old. As she waits for foreign military forces to determine her fate, she remembers the past four years of her life. Reunited with her mother and sisters, she has been living in a village where her mother has finally managed to open a school for girls. But even though the Taliban has been driven from the government, the country is still at war, and many continue to view the education and freedom of girls and women with suspicion and fear.
Genre
Catalog sorted by genre
Floating on Mama’s Song
A seven-year-old girl is amazed when her mother’s singing suddenly begins to make her listeners float, but Grandma says she must stop, making Mama terribly sad until her daughter makes her smile again.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3
Faces In The Water
The water from a magical well in their farmhouse was the reason behind this ‘good fortune’, they said. One day, fifteen-year-old Gurmi sets out to look for the well and what he sees changes everyone’s world forever. The faces of three girls look up at him from the water, and draw him into a world of fun, games and cyber magic -and Gurmi has to face up to an unnerving truth as murky as the surreal well. What terrible crimes have been committed behind the walls of the rambling Diwanchand family home? Will Gurmi and the ghost-girls be able to avenge the evil that has taken place and prevent yet another unspeakable atrocity from occurring? Funny, yet sensitive and immensely powerful, Faces in the Water is the story of lives lost to appease our society’s insatiable hunger for male children, and the price families pay for its sake.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3
Keeping Score
In Brooklyn in 1951, a die-hard Giants fan teaches nine-year-old Maggie, who is a “Bums” (Dodgers) fan, how to keep score which creates a special friendship between them.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3.
On the Swing, The Secrets are Scattered
Written in Arabic. 14 secrets are shared by a mother and her daughter with each secret told in a short story. Each secret is told twice, switching between the mother’s and daughter’s voices in a feminine revelation. They both share their thoughts about some daily life event that every mother and daughter goes through. The secrets they share are from the heart of the Saudi society.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 3.
Planet Ark: Preserving Earth’s Biodiversity
Young readers can learn how to protect the world’s plants and animals from extinction by making small changes in their everyday lives — from planting trees to turning off the tap — to help preserve the world’s biodiversity.
100 Animals on Parade!
With hundreds of colorful animals to count and hundreds of hilarious details to hunt, this unconventional counting book guarantees hundreds of hours of fun!
Lessons from Hu’ul Ke
How a young boy is raised by his grandfather on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. The book denotes various aspects of O’odham himdag (culture) and begins with a simple question that the boy asks his Hu’ul Ke:li (Grandfather) with a culturally relevant answer as to why they do the things they do during the day. Various activities include waking up early in the morning and asking why they do so – to daily chores and activities such as tending horses, working in the garden, hauling water, and gathering food/medicine in the desert.
T-O’odham A-B-C O’ohana/Our O’odham A-B-C Book
This coloring book includes an introduction/information page with a map of Arizona highlighting the O’odham speaking Nations. A pronunciation page is next followed by the coloring pages. The coloring book is written in the Alvarez-Hale orthography (alphabet). Each page highlights one of the twenty-four letters of the O’odham alphabet. Each letter has three line art drawings to color along with the O’odham vocabulary word under each of them.
Flight 1-2-3
A boy counts his way through the airport and onto the plane as it flies towards its destination.