Independent Reading Level: Kindergarten - 3rd grade.

In an Afterword, the author asks, “You might wonder what it was like to grow up in Afghanistan.” He reports that this book is his effort to explain what it is like to grow up in a state of ongoing war, when that is your “normal”:

“You go to school or learn at home. You play with your friends. You laugh and cry. You get hurt and heal. And you dream. Big dreams like those of every other child on the planet.”

The story he came up with focuses on the strength of children in Afghanistan, and in particular, girls who want to get an education, and the female teachers who take risks to help them.

Pari, a little girl in Kabul, gets up early with her mother to travel on the library bus to visit a small village, where a group of girls waits for them. The waiting girls board the bus, return the books they borrowed the week before, and look for new books. Mama then teaches the girls some English. On they go to other small villages, and they make a stop at the United Nations refugee camp (UNHCR) as well . Pari loves the trips, and can’t wait until next year, when she can go to a real school in the city.

There is no violence or fear depicted in this Afghanistan, so it will no doubt be unclear to young readers why there are no schools in the rural areas the bus visits, or that the schools in the city may be dangerous.

[According to news reports, in December 2021 a mobile library bus began operating again in Kabul after three months, for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s Ministry of Education gave permission for the library bus to operate, but millions of girls across the country remained barred from secondary education in public schools.]

Illustrator Gabrielle Grimard used soft watercolors to depict this view of Afghanistan that shows western-looking people, albeit with some wearing headscarves. ( )

This one was fascinating. Particularly the illustrations. ( )