DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
The personalities and perspectives of two 11-year-old girls are portrayed in alternating chapters narrated by Gail Shalan and Reena Dutt. Shalan portrays biracial Mimi, who has just arrived to spend the summer at her grandmother’s home in Karachi, Pakistan. Shalan reveals Mimi’s confusion in journal entries to her estranged white father. As the summer unfolds, she experiences her mother’s growing emotional distance and her grandmother’s harsh and haughty attitude. Reena Dutt delivers the chapters of Sakina, a servant in Mimi’s grandmother’s home. Her heavily accented narration highlights cultural, economic, and language differences. Sakina views Mimi as spoiled, worries about her father’s ill health, and works to improve her English to get into school. After initial friction, the two girls find common ground and, finally, friendship. S.W. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
09/07/2020
Faruqi (A Place at the Table) deftly explores Pakistani culture through the dual perspectives of Mimi and Sakina, two girls from different backgrounds. Eleven-year-old Maryam “Mimi” Scotts lives in Texas with her Pakistan-born single mother, after her American father, who is white, left them to further his journalistic career. Financial difficulties have forced them to return to Karachi, her mother’s birthplace, to visit the grandparents Mimi has never met. In Karachi, 11-year-old Sakina’s diabetic father is a servant for Mimi’s grandmother, whose callous pride alienates her dependents; Sakina helps him in the kitchen but longs to attend New Haven School, whose admissions test she has already failed once due to a low score in English. After a rocky beginning, the girls start to grow closer: Mimi agrees to help Sakina improve her English, and Sakina helps Mimi locate her father. Cultural differences complicate the budding friendship: humor is occasionally lost in translation, and both are initially quick to condemn the other’s lack of cultural knowledge as ignorance. But the likeable heroines develop a touching connection that enhances the fast-paced plot and counterpoints tense situations with their families. The novel’s observations about other societal issues—including religion, politics, wealth, and marriage—add thought-provoking touches. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kari Sutherland, Bradford Literary. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
A Thousand Questions is infused with the author's abiding love for Pakistan and the cultural milieu of the country of her birth; the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Karachi are brought alive with affection, authenticity, and attention to detail. And at the core of this story is an unlikely friendship that crosses boundaries and breaks barriers, the kind of friendship that will lift readers' hearts and leave them smiling.” — Padma Venkatraman, author of The Bridge Home, winner of the Walter Award for Young Readers
“With a big heart and a gentle touch, A Thousand Questions shows us how good friends can lend courage to each other, and how the right friendship at the right time can change your life. This is a beautiful book.” — Anne Ursu, author of Breadcrumbs
"Atmospheric and tender, this delightful story about the life-changing power of friendship is sure to capture the heart of many readers." — Jasmine Warga, author of Other Words For Home
"Faruqi’s descriptions of modern Karachi are rich with sensory detail...A thoughtful portrait of friendship across class lines in modern Pakistan." — Kirkus Reviews
"The likeable heroines develop a touching connection that enhances the fast-paced plot and counterpoints tense situations with their families. The novel’s observations about other societal issues—including religion, politics, wealth, and marriage—add thought-provoking touches." — Publishers Weekly
"Faruqi writes in first person, with chapters alternating between Mimi’s and Sakina’s points of view, with each revealing misconceptions about the other’s culture. As they learn from their differences and similarities, the narrative is enriched by the dual perspective. The inviting book-jacket image suggests the story’s distinctive setting, the girls’ backgrounds, and their relationship, three fundamental elements of this engaging chapter book." — Booklist
"Told through the girls' alternative points of view, the novel examines contemporary urban Pakistan in all its complexity. Faruqi threads issues of privilege, poverty, democracy, and the meaning of family throughout the book." — Horn Book Magazine
Jasmine Warga
"Atmospheric and tender, this delightful story about the life-changing power of friendship is sure to capture the heart of many readers."
Booklist
"Faruqi writes in first person, with chapters alternating between Mimi’s and Sakina’s points of view, with each revealing misconceptions about the other’s culture. As they learn from their differences and similarities, the narrative is enriched by the dual perspective. The inviting book-jacket image suggests the story’s distinctive setting, the girls’ backgrounds, and their relationship, three fundamental elements of this engaging chapter book."
Anne Ursu
With a big heart and a gentle touch, A Thousand Questions shows us how good friends can lend courage to each other, and how the right friendship at the right time can change your life. This is a beautiful book.”
Horn Book Magazine
"Told through the girls' alternative points of view, the novel examines contemporary urban Pakistan in all its complexity. Faruqi threads issues of privilege, poverty, democracy, and the meaning of family throughout the book."
Padma Venkatraman
A Thousand Questions is infused with the author's abiding love for Pakistan and the cultural milieu of the country of her birth; the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of Karachi are brought alive with affection, authenticity, and attention to detail. And at the core of this story is an unlikely friendship that crosses boundaries and breaks barriers, the kind of friendship that will lift readers' hearts and leave them smiling.”
Booklist
"Faruqi writes in first person, with chapters alternating between Mimi’s and Sakina’s points of view, with each revealing misconceptions about the other’s culture. As they learn from their differences and similarities, the narrative is enriched by the dual perspective. The inviting book-jacket image suggests the story’s distinctive setting, the girls’ backgrounds, and their relationship, three fundamental elements of this engaging chapter book."
DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile
The personalities and perspectives of two 11-year-old girls are portrayed in alternating chapters narrated by Gail Shalan and Reena Dutt. Shalan portrays biracial Mimi, who has just arrived to spend the summer at her grandmother’s home in Karachi, Pakistan. Shalan reveals Mimi’s confusion in journal entries to her estranged white father. As the summer unfolds, she experiences her mother’s growing emotional distance and her grandmother’s harsh and haughty attitude. Reena Dutt delivers the chapters of Sakina, a servant in Mimi’s grandmother’s home. Her heavily accented narration highlights cultural, economic, and language differences. Sakina views Mimi as spoiled, worries about her father’s ill health, and works to improve her English to get into school. After initial friction, the two girls find common ground and, finally, friendship. S.W. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2020-08-18
When 11-year-old Houston native Mimi Scotts lands with her mother in Karachi, Pakistan, for summer vacation, she’s not sure what to expect—especially from her Pakistani grandparents, whom she is meeting for the first time.
Mimi’s mother grows increasingly distracted and distant as she navigates the fallout of her failed marriage to Mimi’s White father. Mimi grounds herself by writing to her estranged father in her journal. Although most servants in Mimi’s grandparents’ enormous house are excited about the American arrivals, Sakina Ejaz, a girl Mimi’s age who works as an assistant to her head cook father, couldn’t care less. Between her family’s poverty and her father’s diabetes, she has enough to worry about. But when Mimi agrees to help Sakina pass an English exam to achieve her dream of earning a scholarship and attending school for the first time, the two strike up a friendship greater than the differences in class and nationality that divide them. Together, they weather Mimi’s family secrets, Sakina’s pursuit of her dreams, and the sometimes-violent lead-up to an upcoming election. Faruqi’s descriptions of modern Karachi are rich with sensory detail, and her exploration of Mimi’s complicated feelings about her father make for a beautifully layered character arc. Sakina, however, feels defined almost entirely by her poverty, flattening her story and making her character’s development less satisfying.
A thoughtful portrait of friendship across class lines in modern Pakistan. (Fiction. 9-14)
