July 29, 2025 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
In this novel in vese, we meet Aarzu Raza who lives in Karachi, Pakistan with her aunt and uncle following the death of her parents in an earthquake. While her cousins Arsal and Irfan are encouraged to play and watch cricket, her uncle has strict ideas about acceptable activities for girls, and cricket isn't one of them. Instead of watching the matches, she's encourage to help in the kitchen. Her young sister, Sukoon, has been suffering from kidney disease for a long time, and the family struggles to pay for her treatment on the uncle's salary as a rickshaw driver. At school, Aarzu's best friend is Nazia, who is much bolder than she is. Trying to earn money to help her sister is hard, and the only thing Aarzu can find to do is sell cooked, sliced onions at the market. When a wealthy man is hiring servants for his family, Aarzu disguises herself as a boy and is hired as a servant to the children's Amma, and calls herself Azlan. She's even chopped off her hair so it will fit under a turban. She makes friend with the daughter, Zoya, and tells her the secret. Zoya is helpful, but lives a completely different kind of life. Aarzu finds it hard to balance all of her responsibilities, but still harbors a deep wish to play cricket. When she hears that there is a tournament with a large cash prize, she wonders if this might be a possibility to help save her sister. In the end, Zoya's family helps out a lot, offering the family a place to live and hire Aarzu's uncle as a driver. Will Aarzu be able to save her sister but also gain more freedom as a girl?
Strengths: Aarzu has many challenges in her life, but she meets them all with resilience and determination. She clearly cares about her sister, loves her cousins, and is grateful to her aunt and uncle even if she doesn't always agree with them. I loved that she tried to earn money to help her sister out. While cricket isn't something that excites students in the US, it has a large following internationally, and fans of basketball or football will understand Aarzu's love of a sport. As with many Southeast Asian books, there are a lof of descriptions of food that made me what to go out to eat! I'd love to see more books written by authors living in other countries, since there are so many differences. US readers will have a hard time understanding Aarzu's uncles opinions about what girls can and can't do; in the US, these sorts of opinions haven't been as strong as this since the 1960s.
Weaknesses: This starts with a lot of information about cricket, which I enjoyed, but might be a bit of a stretch for US readers who are completely uninformed about the sport. The only book I've come across that mentions cricket at all is Lorenzi's The Long Pitch Home, and that doesn't circulate well, even with the inclusion of baseball.
What I really think: Ellis' 2009 The Breadwinner first introduced me to the idea of girls pretending to be boys to have more rights; Hashimi's One Half From the East is similar. This is a good choice for readers who thought the differences in experiences between wealthy and poor characters in Faruqi's A Thousand Questions or Saeed's Amal Unbound were thought provoking.
Weaknesses: This starts with a lot of information about cricket, which I enjoyed, but might be a bit of a stretch for US readers who are completely uninformed about the sport. The only book I've come across that mentions cricket at all is Lorenzi's The Long Pitch Home, and that doesn't circulate well, even with the inclusion of baseball.
What I really think: Ellis' 2009 The Breadwinner first introduced me to the idea of girls pretending to be boys to have more rights; Hashimi's One Half From the East is similar. This is a good choice for readers who thought the differences in experiences between wealthy and poor characters in Faruqi's A Thousand Questions or Saeed's Amal Unbound were thought provoking.
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