Again I break from my fiction preference to review another book about these two remarkable individuals: Malala and Iqbal. In this beautiful book linking two brave children from Pakistan, Jeanette Winter’s brings their stories to a young audience in a powerfully simplistic way. Written on an AR 3.6 level, each story is 20 pages and presented in a flip book format. Before each story there is a brief Author’s Note about each character in a broader view, for context to be given as needed to the adults to share with the children listening to the book, or for older children to read and deepen their understanding and appreciation. The sentences are short and the font and presentation is inviting to even early readers. The pictures are wonderful and do a tremendous job showing the intensity of the environment Malala and Iqbal face, while not frightening the reader.
The Malala portion of the book starts with the Taliban asking for her on the bus and like her biography, then takes the reader to the threats and deterrents they made to girls in school, but on an audience appropriate level. It tells how they stopped wearing uniforms so that they could be harder to identify and how even burning the girls school didn’t stop them. It then returns to her being shot and going from the hospital in Swat to one in England. It concludes with her speaking to the U.N. on her 16th birthday.
The story of Iqbal is a bit harder I think for children to understand as they may not know what a loom is or have ever thought about who makes carpets. Also the words bondage, Peshgi, outlawed, and mourners are not in their vocabulary . They should understand that he is sold for an unpaid $12 debt, but that too may need to be stressed and explained. If the kids can grasp this, I really think children as young as kindergarten can appreciate his story. I love that the author didn’t shy away from the fact that he was shot and killed. Even if they do not understand all the facets that make Iqbal’s work so incredible. They will feel inspired that someone so young was so brave. 
This beautiful, beautiful book tells of a little and sparsely known event in history. During the holocaust The Grand Mosque of Paris served as a place of refuge for many North African Jews. Many who passed through the vast gardens and beautiful Mosque were given fake documents of conversion, tombstones with their family names inscribed, and access to truly underground passageways (subterranean mazes), as the Muslims of Paris offered assistance to keep their Jewish brother’s and sister’s safe from the Nazi regime. Many of the stories were recently uncovered and with the passage of time, so much of the information has been lost. As a result the book is a bit choppy, each page tells what is known about the Muslims’ assistance in some capacity, but does not flow to the next page. So there are generalized recountings of children being hidden with other families, the efforts of the Kabyle Ressistance (Berbers from Algeria) to smuggle Jews to safety, etc.. There are also a few specific examples of Salim Halali, a young Berber Jew from Algeria, two friends one a Muslim the other a Jew seeking shelter, a Tunisian Jew who stayed at the Mosque for over two years,and a few others, but with the exception of the use of the Grand Mosque and a Doctor Ahmed Somia very little flows throughout the book. Thus making it more of a historical account than a story.
Islamic School Librarian 