Amal Unbound
by Aisha Saeed
Here is a book talk about the book!! This is an elementary teacher from Michigan's take on Amal Unbound.
About the book:
This is such an empowering story about a young girl, Amal, who loves to learn and helps her teacher teach in the school she attends. She is the eldest daughter in a Pakistani village. Amal is taken out of school when her mother gives birth to another child, and has to take care of her younger siblings while her mother recovers from child birth and issues her mother faces with the process of child birth. When Amal goes to the market one day, she gets hit by a car and asked to give a man (she doesn't know) a pomegranate she had bought. This angers Amal for personal reasons about hierarchy. Little does she know, this was a man she shouldn't have messed with. This man is the landlord of the village Amal and her family live in. The landlords in and around Amal's home have power unlike what we know of a landlord. They can make people their servants, gardeners, or worse. Amal is taken by the landlord (Khan) after he calls upon the debt her father owes. Without the money and no other way to pay the Khan back, Amal is sent to be a servant at the estate to repay and work off her father's debt. After she is sent to work at the estate, she has to work through life as a servant, learning when she is oppressed, standing up for her rights and finding a way to help others. This was an AMAZING read and I would really love to teach it in my class one day!
Aisha does a lot of school visits and loves to receive mail from people who read her book! We can contact her via USPS at this address:
Aisha Saeed PO BOX 422651 Atlanta, GA 30342
Her book is also a part of the global read aloud text set!! Here are some videos of Aisha reading aloud to us. This is separated into chunks by the GRA week!
Malala, a Brave Girl from Pakistan
/Iqbal, a Brave Boy from Pakistan:
Two Stories of Bravery
written by Jeanette Winter
This book is a combination of two stories about life as children in Pakistan. Malala is girl who pushed for women's rights in education and had to do a lot of things children shouldn't have to be worried about. She had to wear her regular clothes and take protected transport to the school. Iqbal is a boy who was brought into forced child labor at a YOUNG age (younger than 10). He finds out there are laws that protect children and he spreads the word. Iqbal becomes a huge advocate for children labor protection when he escapes his chains in the carpet factory where he was forced to weave and work at. Both of these children used their voices to create CHANGE and promote children's rights in different ways.