Saadia Faruqi’s A Thousand Questions is a warm, thoughtful story for 9 year olds about two girls in one big house in Karachi, one staying upstairs and one working in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Mimi is from Houston. Her mum has brought her to Pakistan for the summer, to stay with her grandparents. She’s only ever seen them on Skype. It’s boiling. She speaks hardly any Urdu. And her grandparents live in a mansion, which is a shock, because Mimi and her mum have been scraping by in a one-bedroom flat.<\/p>\n
Secretly, Mimi is writing letters to her dad in her new journal. He left when she was five, and she hasn’t heard from him in years.<\/p>\n
Sakina’s abba is the cook in that house, and she works there every day as his helper. He’s diabetic and forgets to eat unless she makes him. She’s desperate to go to school. She did well in maths and science on her admission test but failed English, and she gets one more try.<\/p>\n
The chapters swap between the two girls, which is where it really shines. You see Mimi stick her tongue out at her mum over lunch, then you see Sakina, horrified, waiting for her to get told off. You get Mimi grumbling that even the nuggets are spicy, and Sakina’s family sharing one bucket of water a day.<\/p>\n
It never lectures. It just lets your reader stand in both girls’ shoes and notice things. Who gets to eat at the table? Who gets to go to school?<\/p>\n
The girls don’t like each other much at first (Sakina thinks Mimi is rude, and Mimi thinks the same about Sakina). You can probably guess they’ll need each other before the summer’s out.<\/p>\n
There are small, real details everywhere. The call to prayer from the mosque down the street. Chess with a kind grandad. A grandmother screaming at the gardener about her roses. It’s a lovely way to spend a summer somewhere new.<\/p>\n
Worth mentioning that Sakina’s life is hard and the book is honest about it. In passing, she remembers neighbourhood children who died in the heat, and a girl killed when her scarf caught in a motorbike wheel. A sensitive reader might want to talk those bits through.<\/p>\n
If your reader enjoys this, Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero is by Saadia Faruqi too. Yusuf is starting middle school in a small Texas town, and the first thing he finds in his new locker is a nasty note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saadia Faruqi’s A Thousand Questions is a warm, thoughtful story for 9 year olds about two girls in one big house in Karachi, one staying upstairs and one working in the kitchen. Mimi is from Houston. Her mum has brought her to Pakistan for the summer, to stay with her grandparents. She’s only ever seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12884,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9816,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero","lr_seo_hook":"An American girl and the cook's daughter share one hot summer in Karachi."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[874],"class_list":["post-6717","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-saadia-faruqi"],"yoast_title":"A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"An American girl and the cook's daughter share one hot summer in Karachi. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n