Category: Life

“To those children all over the world who have no access to education, to those teachers who bravely continue teaching, and to anyone who has fought for their basic human rights and education.”

Malala Yousafzai

Pakistani school girl Malala Yousafzai’s story of her refusal to abide by the Taliban’s orders forbidding girls to attend school and her bravery in speaking out for the right to do so. This Young Reader’s Edition* was co-authored with Patricia McCormick and is based on the New York Times Bestseller.

Part One: Before the Taliban describes Malala’s desires to attend the school her father founded, to excel in her studies, socialize with her friends, quarrel with her brothers, and be a good daughter in a loving, modern Pakistani family. Malala was raised in Mingora, the largest city in the famously beautiful Swat Valley. Malala’s father, Ziauddin and mother Toor Pekai valued literacy for their children as a sacred right. Her father founded a school three years before Malala was born and by the time she was eight years old the school had over 800 students and three campuses.

In Part Two: A Shadow over Our Valley the insidious presence of Radio Mullah and the escalation of Taliban rule unfolds into daily life until Malala and the people of her region learn ‘What Terrorism Feels Like‘.

After an earthquake in 2005 devastated the region, conservative religious groups stepped in before the government could respond and many volunteers were from organizations with ties to militant groups. Their leaders began to preach that God would punish the people if they did not change their ways and adopt Sharia, Islamic law. Sharia outlaws music, dancing, smoking, and watching television. These, and other forbidden things are known as ‘haram’. Within two years of the earthquake, Radio Mullah proclaimed that schools for girls were haram.

Part Three: Finding My Voice recounts how her family’s belief that education is a universal human right which propels the Yousafzai household into brighter and brighter political and media spotlights.

Malala started working with the BBC and wrote a diary about life under the Taliban, using a pseudonym, Gul Makai. She began giving interviews and appearing on television and she did not hide her face. “Fazlullah’s men wear masks, because they are criminals. But I have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong.” She began gaining international notoriety and won humanitarian peace prizes.

The Taliban directly threatened Malala’s father and the school itself. Malala, her father and some of her fellow students began speaking out against the Taliban. Schools were being targeted and bombed regularly. In December 2008, Radio Mullah decreed that “After the fifteenth of January, no girl, whether big or little shall go to school. Otherwise, you know what we can do.”

Part Four: Targeted brings the reader right up to the moment most know from the beginning will come. Death threats began in early 2012. On October 9, 2012 a gunman climbed into the back of fifteen year old Malala’s school bus and shouted, “Who is Malala?” before shooting her point blank along with two classmates.

Part Five: A New Life, Far From Home: After the shooting, Malala ultimately received medical treatment in Birmingham, England. Her classmates both survived the attack as well. On her sixteenth birthday she was invited to address the United Nations and in 2014, at age seventeen was the youngest recipient of the Noble Prize for Peace.

The spirituality in her story comes through time and time again. Malala is a person of faith and she writes of her prayers as conversations with God. She gives praise joyfully and freely, from the heart of a grateful child.

How great God is! He has given us eyes to see the beauty of the world, hands to touch it, a nose to experience all its fragrance, and a heart to appreciate it all. But we don’t realize how miraculous our senses are until we lose one.
The return of my hearing was just one miracle.
A Talib had fired three shots at point-blank range at three girls in a school bus—and none of us were killed.
One person had tried to silence me. And millions spoke out. Those were miracles, too.

Malala Yousafzai

The story is enriched by a Glossary and Time Line of Important Events as well as ‘A Note on the Malala Fund’. and my personal favorite, a map of Swat and insert showing Mingora and Malala’s ancestral home in Shangla.

To all the girls who have faced injustice and been silenced. Together we will be heard.

Malala Yousafzai

*oops! Did not notice I had checked out the Young Readers Edition – the “Regular” edition will undoubtedly go into more political and personal detail.