Wanting Mor

By Rukhsana Khan

Book Overview

Winner of the Middle East Book Award, Youth Fiction category

Jameela lives with her mother and father in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that there is no school in their poor, war-torn village, and Jameela lives with a birth defect that has left her with a cleft lip, she feels relatively secure, sustained by her faith and the strength of her beloved mother, Mor.

But when Mor suddenly dies, Jameela's father impulsively decides to seek a new life in Kabul. He remarries, a situation that turns Jameela into a virtual slave to her demanding stepmother. When the stepmother discovers that Jameela is trying to learn to read, she urges her father to simply abandon the child in Kabul's busy marketplace. Jameela ends up in an orphanage.

Throughout it all, it is the memory of Mor that anchors her and in the end gives Jameela the strength to face her father and stepmother when fate brings them into her life again.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3
Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6
Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3
Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6
Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0888998627
• ISBN13: 9780888998620
• Release Date: September 2010
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.6"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

wow.

This book is deeply touching. It tells the tale of a young girl whose mother recently died, and her father isn't properly taking care of her. She struggles to keep going after her father remarries. She was born with a lip deformity, and she is frightened because she believes she will be teased because of it. This reveiw is neither good, nor very descriptive, but believe me. This is a GOOD book.

A hard world

We live in a hard old world, even though for many of us that fact is disguised by pleasant surroundings. And the only thing that gets any of us through is faith, hope and occasionally the kindness of strangers.

Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children

Jameela had already experienced so much hardship as a youngster living in Afghanistan during the Taliban's stronghold and then the American invasion. She lived in poverty and had no education, she had lost a number of family members to violence and disease, and she had to deal with the inevitable stares when people saw her cleft lip. Then on the most devastating day of all, her mother died after a brief illness. With virtually no time to grieve the loss of her Mor, Jameela was forced to leave the village with her drug-addicted father for the capital city in an ill-conceived plan to find new work. Life for Jameela in Kabul was grim and dismal as she worked under slave-like conditions, first in a temporary situation and then in the household of a surly woman who her father had suddenly married. The step-mother despised Jameela and instructed her new husband to abandon Jameela in a busy Kabul market. Inexplicably, he complied, and Jameela was left completely and totally alone. Ultimately, it took the kindness of strangers, inspiration from her strong faith, memories of her precious Mor, and the power of an education to turn her life around in the most surprising and ironic of ways. Wanting Mor stands out as a mesmerizing book with lively characters, heartbreaking plot developments, and incredibly rich cultural content. Jameela's plight is representative of the wide-scale devaluation of the social and economic status of women and girls in Central Asia, which has led to the abandonment and neglect of unwanted girls. Based on a true event, this book provides testament to the depths of the problem and the possibilities for change.