What a delightful book! I really enjoyed watching the girls' friendship develop. It was important that the stark contrast between the girls was shown at the very beginning and then their differences were more closed at the end. I liked this because it shows kids reading this book that others may have different lives than we do but we are all the same inside. Love this message for kids!
I also enjoyed reading about the social justice theme with the election and how it affects kids and all about the landscape and cultural life of Karachi.
Looking forward to purchasing this ownvoices book for my elementary school libraries!

A Thousand Questions is a beautiful #ownvoices story! I cannot wait to share this story with my kids. This story is an excellent and moving tale of friendship, family and curiosity. Loved it!

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I also read and enjoyed Saadia Faruqi's book written with Laura Shovan this year, A Place at The Table. Thanks to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this latest one. Saadia is from Karachi, Pakistan originally and while she writes here about two young girls, she also says in her author's note that this is a love letter to Karachi, too. This backdrop of the story gives a loving glimpse of this ancient city, now modern in some ways, still carrying its history, too.
It's a middle-grade novel first starting with disgusted eleven-year-old Mimi, not happy at all about spending her summer with grandparents she barely knows. She begins by starting a new journal writing to her father about the time there, the father who left her and her mother when she was five. The cook's daughter, same age, is hoping for entry into a private school, not wishing at all to remain her father's assistant for the rest of her life. Her family is very poor, however, and she keeps this goal a secret, wondering if she will ever get the chance for better.
At first, the girls are wary of each other. How in this world can a rich American girl ever have anything in common with a poor Pakistani? But they do find each other in ways you might not imagine, but will love the intertwining story, mixed in with both families' troubles and the change that happens when secrets are revealed. Learning how friendships work and how families can love no matter the circumstance means a great story for kids to read and connect with personally. I enjoyed it very much!

The set up here is one we don't often see in middle grade fiction - a child visiting her mother's homeland for the first time, experiencing a vastly different culture, feeling like an outsider while also feeling like she should understand it better. We get culture clash paired with degrees of class since Mimi and her mother are, by American standards, low income while her grandparents are, by any standards, wealthy. Then we meet Sakina who lives in poverty. So Mimi learns to recognize her own privilege while Sakina also gets a bit of a lesson about assumptions of another culture. We get a simple presentation of the responsibility of the "haves" to the rest of the world. We're also confronted with openly corrupt politics and the complexities of relationships with parents. Most interesting is the ending. Unlike most books for this age group this plot doesn't tie up all of the loose ends. It's more of a snapshot, the events that happen while Mimi and her mother are in Pakistan. A few plot points get resolved but most do not. We're left to draw our own conclusions, making this a great choice for book clubs.

When Mimi's mom decides to take her to Pakistan for the summer she is not happy. She is totally shocked when she gets there and finds out that her grandparents, whom she has never met, are rich with servants. What other things has her mom been hiding. To cope, Mimi starts writing letters to her father whom she hasn't seen in years. He is a journalist and she is shocked to learn he is also in Pakistan. Together with Sakina, the cook's daughter Mimi explores a different culture and makes some important discoveries about herself and others.

This was an interesting glimpse into Pakistan life and culture as well as two girls learning about the haves and have nots.

Beautiful middle grade novel about two girls, who live very different lives, yet find friendship through common goals. Each chapter is told by one of the girls and then switches to the other. I loved learning about the city of Karachi and how differently one might have lived if they grew up in Pakistan vs America. I will definitely be recommending and sharing this book with others.

A Thousand Questions is a story with two voices. One is a girl named Mimi who travels with her mom to Pakistan for the summer to visit grandparents she has never met. The other is the Mimi's grandparents' cook's daughter Sakina who secretly hopes to go to school. Mimi starts the summer not happy with going to Pakistan, but slowly comes to enjoy it there and starts an unlikely friendship with Sakina. Sakina starts by using Mimi to learn English well enough to pass the test to be accepted into school, but soon finds that they have much in common and become good friends. The story was beautifully written and is a perfect story of friendship and empathy.

This 320 page middle grade novel with alternating point of view chapters engulfs you like a warm genuine hug. It does not have a clear climax, it is predictable, and some characters and cultural touch points could have used more detail, but honestly, I couldn’t put it down. As a half American kid who spent my summers in Karachi, so much of the author’s love of her homeland flows so effortlessly from the pages and took me back to my childhood and how the transformation of comparing the two countries moves to seeing the best in both causes growth within your heart and makes leaving so devastatingly hard. Readers of all backgrounds will seamlessly fall in to the story and enjoy the growth of the main characters, while learning a bit about a culture and the similarities of people.

SYNOPSIS:

The back drop is the sweltering heat of a Karachi summer in the middle of elections. Mimi, Maryam, is visiting Pakistan for the first time in her life. It is her mother’s home land, but her grandparents, and her mom aren’t close. They didn’t approve of Mimi’s dad and mom getting married, and even though they have been divorced for years and he has left, Mimi’s mom hasn’t been home in 12 years.

Sakina narrates the other chapters. She is the daughter of Mimi’s grandparent’s cook. She dreams of going to school, but needs help with her English to pass the admissions test. And even if she passes her family needs her income to survive, and her father’s failing health means that she has to take over his job too.

When Mimi arrives at her grandparents home, it is awkward at best. She doesn’t really know her grandparents, she has never had servants before, and her mother is rarely around. That leaves her to get to know Sakina. Sakina finds this odd as the owners of the home rarely “chat” with her and here this American girl wants to get to know her and is fine with helping in the kitchen. The two strike a tentative friendship as Mimi agrees to help Sakina with her english, and Sakina with the permission of Mimi’s grandmother and with the use of the driver, agrees to show her some of the city.

As Mimi takes in the traditional tourists sites she gives Sakina her first taste of ice cream and soda and other “luxuries” she has never experienced. Sakina introduces her to bun kabobs and other local foods. The budding friendship isn’t smooth, mostly because Mimi constantly compares Pakistan to America and Sakina doesn’t understand why Mimi doesn’t have a father. When the girls find out that Mimi’s dad, a journalist, is in Karachi covering the elections, the girls work together to try and find him.

Throughout all of this, Mimi keeps a journal and the entries are letters to her father.

WHY I LIKE IT:

I love that the girls have to navigate their friendship without and often despite interference from adults. I also like that while societal wise one girl is seen as economically privileged and one is not, the book gives enough for even elementary aged children to see that in America Mimi and her mom are financial struggling, but in Pakistan they are not and how that disparity is arbitrary. They also see that family and safety and security are also a part of life’s quality and not country specific. Things that one girl takes for granted are envied by the other, and it goes both ways.

Even for a middle grades book, there were some plot holes. If Mimi had been late night googling and plotting on a secret map all the places her dad had been writing articles from, she should have had a heads up about Pakistan. She knows so little about Islam and has like one shelwar kamees, so it seems a bit of a stretch that she speaks urdu pretty proficiently. I feel like some stumbling with the language or some back story on that would have been great.

Religion is handled as a cultural touch point, neither girl prays, but both find solace in visiting a masjid. Various characters are in sleeveless tops, the athan is heard in the back ground. I wish there would have been a bit more finding of Islam as Mimi found her culture too, but alas it isn’t there.

The majority of the book takes place within the grandparent’s home with the elections being a big part of why they can’t go out, yet the mom goes out a lot, which really rubbed me the wrong way. She took her daughter shopping once to meet an old friend and that is it. Who travels across the world to spend zero time with her kid. I didn’t like the mom at all, and wish there was some background or even some growth on her part. A lot of the minor characters seemed to fizzle as well in terms of having some depth.

There are some cultural and country facts at the end of the book, but within the text I was surprised that more wasn’t shared. I like that it mentioned Karachi was the original capital, but it should have also in the same sentence mentioned that Islamabad is the current, I think readers would assume that Karachi is still the capital of Pakistan.

The book is an OWN voice through and through and the value of that is felt in every sentence. It isn’t all positive and rosy, but it is genuine. The author loves what she is writing about and it shines through leaving the reader with a favorable sense of Pakistan: the country, the culture and the people.

FLAGS:

The book is clean, possibly some tense moments when Sakina’s family is robbed. There is also discussion of marrying someone your parents don’t approve of, divorce, and Mimi’s mom possibly having a boyfriend. Mimi’s mom is an artist and paints pictures of people. There is lying and scheming.

TOOLS FOR LEADING THE DISCUSSION:

I think the book would be a fine choice for an elementary book club, I think any one older will find the book a tad bit predictable. I plan to have my children read it so we can discuss points of view, experiences, universal traits and social economic classes. There are a lot of wonderful lessons wrapped up in a heartfelt story that I can see 4th and 5th grade children benefiting from over and over again.

A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi is a great look at the class system in Pakistan, a look at culture clashes and friendship in the mist of all the divides existing in the world.. Sakina has little and must work hard. Mimi an American must discover another side of her world. An enlightening read.

This is a charming middle-grades novel that digs deep to address issues of cultural, religious, and class differences in ways both serious and funny. The two 12-year-old narrators, Mimi (American) and Sakina (Pakistani) alternate chapters as they tell the story of the friendship that develops between them over the summer when Mimi's mom returns to Karachi to visit her family. Mimi is surprised to discover that her grandparents are wealthy--so wealthy, in fact, that they employ several servants, including Sakina's dad, who's their cook. Despite their differences, though, Mimi and Sakina quickly become friends, with Sakina taking Mimi out to see the real Karachi and Mimi coaching Sakina in English for her school-admission exam.

I found it a little surprising that Mimi's grandparents--especially the grandmother, who's presented initially as a tyrant--encourage the friendship to the extent that they do, allowing Sakina to take time off from helping her father in the kitchen to pal around with Mimi. And in the end, the novel kind of shies away from addressing some of the larger questions it raises--for example, the ways in which Sakina's family's lives depend, in many ways quite literally, on their employers' kindness. It may well be accurate about the lack of health care and other safety nets for the poor in Pakistan, but to me it just underscored the powerlessness of Sakina's family (and those who don't have their relative advantages). Their position doesn't really change at all; they just get lucky.

But that's probably more indicative of me reading like an American than anything else. I think young readers will enjoy this story.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

A solid middle grades novel told from the perspective of two pre-teens - Mimi and Sakina. Middle grades readers will enjoy the story line and friendship that forms between Mimi and Sakina.

Great multi-dimensional characters and a nicely complex plot with lots of themes to build off of. Poverty, classism, diabetes, education, politics, divorce...just to name a few. Faruqi weaves humor, angst, and real emotional punch in such a perfect way that I felt like I was honestly watching their drama unfold.

I love a good inclusive read! Beautiful story, the characters seemed so real and relatable and I loved taking this journey with them!!

This was a really sweet story about two girls learning about the other who lives in a complete different world from the other. I love the relationship between Maya and her mom. Learning about the Pakistani culture was really interesting to me as well. This will be a great #ownvoices addition to school libraries, classrooms, and bookstores.

A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi, 2020
Recommended for grades 4-6; realistic fiction

Twelve-year-old Maryam Scotts, better known as Mimi, is not thrilled to be spending her summer vacation in her mother’s hometown of Karachi, Pakistan. She misses her friend Zoe, she doesn’t really know her grandparents, and she isn’t very good at speaking Urdu. To keep herself occupied during this unwanted vacation, Mimi keeps a journal that she addresses to her estranged father. Although she knows that her mother feels they’re better off without Tom Scotts in their lives, Mimi is determined to reunite with him.

Meanwhile, Sakina Ejaz, the cook’s daughter, has her own problems. For one thing, her diabetic father has been feeling ill a lot lately, and besides that, Mimi’s grandmother is often angry and unkind to her servants. And although Sakina’s family isn’t as poor as some people, they can’t afford for her to go to school, which is what she’d really like. She has taken an entrance exam anyway, but she failed the English section and will need to take it again before school is even a possibility.

Mimi and Sakina don’t make a great first impression on each other; Sakina is a little insulted that Mimi thinks her American lifestyle is so much better than life in Pakistan, and Mimi wishes Sakina would smile and laugh more. Besides that, Mimi’s grandmother doesn’t really want Mimi bonding with a servant girl. But the two end up becoming friends anyway. Mimi helps Sakina practice her English, and Sakina helps Mimi settle in to the unfamiliar environment. Later, Mimi hears that her father is currently in the area, and Sakina helps Mimi find him.

The point of view alternates between Mimi and Sakina, thereby contrasting their very different life situations. Parts of the story reminded me a little of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, especially because there’s an emphasis on the question of which character has a better life. Mimi’s life is certainly more comfortable and involves less work, but Sakina is part of a loving family.

The title mainly refers to the questions that Mimi asks about her father in her journal. She’s curious about things like what books he likes to read and what his favorite foods are, but she also asks the big questions, like whether he still thinks about her and whether he wants her back in his life. Mimi does get to speak to her father towards the end of the book and gets answers to some of her questions.

In my opinion, the main appeal factor of this book is the setting. Pakistan’s climate and culture are described thoroughly without any long, boring exposition, and readers will even gain some understanding of the socioeconomic and political situation of the country. The plot was also fairly interesting, and for the most part, the writing style was natural and engaging. However, there were a few places where the dialogue felt a little stilted, especially in passages where Sakina is confused by English idioms.

I also felt like the word “giggled” is used a little too often and feels like filler text. Mimi’s default reaction to most things seems to be giggling. There’s one particular passage in which Mimi and Sakina are laughing together that just goes on a little too long, describing the act of laughing in greater detail than is necessary. Maybe all of that is because humor is supposed to be an important theme in the book. There are quite a few passages that describe Mimi’s funny T-shirts, or where one character is judgemental of another character’s sense of humor or lack thereof. But if that is the case, that theme wasn’t really clear and doesn’t really relate to anything else in the story.

I ended up giving this book four stars on Goodreads, but I’d consider it to be on the low end of the four-star rating. It’s not going to end up on my Best Books of the Year list.

"A Thousand Questions" by Saadia Faruqi is a great coming of age book. What I love the best is that the story takes place outside of the U.S. Students get to learn about a different culture and analyze their own through the lives of Mimi and Sakina. The biggest take away is realizing that people live lives around the globe and hold different ideas and values, which we can learn from, and they can learn from us. It is not until we get out of our bubble that we are able to gain perspective and look at important things in life (family, friendship, kindness, even government policy, etc.)

Mimi, an American by birth and a half-Pakistani who has never met her grandparents in person, heads to Karachi, Pakistan with her mother for the summer. Ever since her parents divorced, Mimi and her mother have been poor, so when she first enters her grandparents’ home a discovers servants and cooks, she doesn’t quite know what to think.

She has a thousand questions about her mother’s family, her father, and why they lived in poverty in Houston when her grandparents have wealth. Mostly, she dreams of one day finding her father and asking him why he left them.

Sakina, the cook’s daughter, dreams of one day attending school. For now, she knows she must assist her father in the rich family’s kitchen. But one day, if her English improves enough, she may win a scholarship. An education could lift her family out of poverty and change their lives forever.

When she first meets Mimi, the rich granddaughter of her employers, she doesn’t think they have much in common. Mimi seems so clueless.

As the girls get to know each other, they begin to respect each other in ways that will change them forever.

The beautiful, tender prose by Pakistani-American author Saadia Faruqi paints a many-layered portrait of family, friendships, and culture. Although of Pakistani descent, Mimi speaks little of her grandparent’s language. She matures over the summer from a clueless American to a young woman who asks a thousand questions that get the adults around her thinking, too.

We need more books like this one to help children (and adults) understand cultural differences can separate us, or give us a reason to find commonalities and come together in unique communities.

Warm greetings of Assalamu Alaikum and the azaan (call to prayer) reverberated through my head as I finished reading this book. I didn't want it to end! Mimi's mom forces (at her parent's insistence) Mimi to embark on a trip to Pakistan (paid for by Samia's parents) so that she can reconnect with her parents and Mimi can get to know her grandparents and the country of her mother's birth. As I journeyed through this book with eleven-year-old Mimi, her mom, and everyone they met in Pakistan, I felt like this book was an immersive experience since through reading the descriptions and seeing things through Mimi and Sakina's eyes, I experienced the colors, smells, sights, sounds, and heat that welcomed Mimi and her mom (Samia) to Karachi. In the beginning, everything is new and strange and Mimi is not sure she will like it or survive the constant heat. She pours her thoughts out in a journal, in the form of a letter to her absent father. Gradually, without, even being aware of it happening, the people and the city grow on Mimi. She befriends the cook's (Abba's) daughter, Sakina and from there she begins to open her mind and heart more and more to her surroundings. She discovers that Sakina's dream is to be admitted to New Haven School.....and she needs Mimi's help! She warms to the city and her once distant grandparents through games of chess with her Nani (grandfather), and tours of the city with Malik (driver) and Sakina, She becomes aware of the stark contrast between those who live in poverty (Sakina and family) and others, like her mother's parents who have money. It's an election year so that adds to the excitement that has enveloped Mimi and Samia. This is a book of discovery as Mimi learns about Karachi and its secrets. Helping Sakina gives her a purpose and through their friendship, she discovers not only incredible things about Pakistan (mangoes, bun kabab!) but things about herself. Mimi gets a surprise at the end that just may give her the hope and peace she needs. I lived in Pakistan when I was about Mimi's age and my first stop, like Mimi, was Karachi. Reading this book was nostalgic for me and brought back memories. I look forward to reading more books by this author. I leave with the picture of Mimi and Sakina, running towards one of the city sites with dupatta's flying behind them. For now, I envy those who will discover this treasure for the first time and to the author, shukriya for brightening my world with A Thousand Questions!

Review copy: Digital ARC via Netgalley

This is a fabulous story of family, identity, friendship and going after dreams. Mimi and Sakina appear to have very different lives, but they learn a lot from each other and inspire each other to do hard things. I loved getting to see Karachi from both an insider and outsider point of view. I have to admit that I am jealous of young people today having the ability to use the Internet to see the setting of a book using Google Maps and other resources. I had no real images in my head of Karachi and the book was really immersive.

Saadia Faruqi made me care about these young people and I flew through the book. I can't wait to share it with my students.

A beautifully written novel about an unlikely friendship formed between two girls from very different backgrounds. The author's love for the country where she was born comes through in the story. This will appeal to my students who love stories about friendships.

Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.