Grounded

Grounded, by Aisha Saeed, Huda Al-Marashi, Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow and S.K. Ali, is a warm, funny story for 10 year olds about four kids stuck in an airport one stormy night.

What happens

Hurston Airport is packed with families heading home from MONA, a huge Muslim conference. Then lightning cracks across the sky and every single flight is grounded.

The chapters take turns between four kids. Feek is twelve, full of rhymes he wants his poet dad to hear, and he has just lost his little sister Ruqi (again). Hanna is eleven and a half and on a mission to rescue Snickerdoodle, a cat who's been missing in the airport for a week. Sami has a karate tournament tomorrow and a worry that grows every time the departures board flips to "delayed". And Nora is a congresswoman's daughter who would much rather be filming videos about chocolate than sitting at a Muslim conference at all.

You get a real feel for each voice. Feek speed-walks without bending his feet so his brand-new trainers don't crease. Hanna climbs on a chair in the food court to make a speech about the cat. Sami keeps hearing his big brother's calm advice in his head. Nora rolls her eyes at nearly everyone, but she's the one who quietly rescues Ruqi at the cinnamon roll counter.

Every one of them has something going on at home too. There's a dad who's never around, a dad who might be about to remarry, and a mum who's always on the phone. It's done with a light touch, and you can see them starting to notice each other's worries.

Faith is woven through it all very naturally. Hanna makes a dua when Ruqi goes missing, and Nora is working out how she feels about being Muslim in the first place. If your reader is Muslim, they'll probably spot bits of their own life here. If not, it's a lovely, lived-in window into it.

It's also just good fun. A missing cat, a missing preschooler with a sparkly unicorn headband, a thunderstorm and a whole night to fill. What could possibly go wrong?

What to read next

For more from two of these authors, try Once Upon an Eid. Aisha Saeed and S.K. Ali put it together, and every story happens around Eid, starting with a girl from Philly spending the day with family she barely knows.