This book is excellent for exploring culture. It invites its readers into the life of a young girl and her experiences as an emerging Indian woman. This book is also great to enforce women empowerment and identity. The main character struggles with finding out who she wants to be based on comparing herself to her sister and other young women around her and based on her cultural responsibilities and familial expectations. ( )

I gave this book a 5/5 because of how real it is. It shows kids that things don't always end up happily ever after. Things will end up fine but not always perfect. This book is all about this family that has to go through the struggles of being women in India in the 1970s. The main girl loves to play tennis and do sports but can't as a girl. This is not fair to me and i was very mad about this. She eventually gets to play but its very hard. I will have this book in my class library if i need it for my older kids. ( )

An amazing read appropriate for even children at the elementary age of 4-5th grade, this book focuses on the trials of a young girl fighting her way through the stereotypical expectations of her society as she struggles to learn to please her family as well as hide her feminist viewpoints and action. An eye-opener about societal expectations and repercussions, feminist equality and overcoming the stereotype, and going above and beyond for the love of your family; the Secret Keeper would be an excellent read for children to broaden their perspective of how society shapes a person’s thinking, a new religion and culture difference, and to start the introduction of a journal-style fiction. Not to mention, to the western culture, this gives the eastern culture the chance to introduce where they come from and the roles they go through in their society in contrast to the one in the western region. A good practice to read for an introduction to chapter books, the Secret Keeper is an excellent book for children, especially to multilingual learners as a way for them to feel heard and understood. ( )

This is a lovely book about a tomboy named Asha growing up in 1970s India. While Asha's father is traveling to the US to find a job, Asha, her mother, and older sister go to live with her father's very traditional relatives in Calcutta. Asha feels stifled by their old-fashioned view of propriety; all she wants to do is go outside and play cricket.

The story is an interesting and realistic glimpse into the lives of a normal Bengali family of this time period. At times, though, I wondered whether this needed to be a historical fiction since I'm sure many people still live with the way Asha's family does (and the author does also refer to this in the afterword). Perkins's writing style is modern and fun and I appreciated how the casually used foreign words were not italicized as they are in other books, which I find very off-putting (there is a glossary in the back which I read before I started and didn't need to look at again). Many readers may be saddened by the ending, but I thought it was a refreshing and realistic choice on the part of the author.

PS I read this on my kindle and the images looked great! ( )

I really enjoyed this book because I had the opportunity to learn about a different country; India. Having resources about other countries and cultures are becoming more noticeable in classrooms, but I feel that the country India is rarely seen. If a reader does not prefer information texts, this book keeps the reader interested because he/she is experiencing the protagonist's daily life and simultaneously learning about Indian culture as the story progresses. I wouldn't use this text in schools because it discusses arranged marriages and the more mature events that come along with it (the wedding night). Although, everyone's opinion will vary on whether to use in a classroom. Otherwise, the story's plot was very captivating and made me excited to continue reading. If it is used in a classroom, it can be used to introduce many cultural aspect of India. The students could also discuss/analyze the book in terms of how the characters go through challenging circumstances, their problems/solutions, and how they evolve. The plot, vocabulary, and inferences can be complex which can be used to work with a reading group that is slightly lower than the book's actual reading level while the the teacher offers guiding questions and assistance. ( )