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Rosanne Hawke writes hard-hitting yet compassionate novels about young people in difficult, often dire, situations. Her most recent novel for young adults is The Truth About Peacock Blue (Allen & Unwin), about a young girl accused of blasphemy. It’s an inordinately powerful and topical story, which is also well balanced. Thanks for speaking with Boomerang […]

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 8, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316322407
ISBN-13: 978-0316322409

A MEMOIR BY THE YOUNGEST RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

“I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.”

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person’s voice to inspire change in the world.

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai’s advocacy has since grown into an international movement.

Her family runs a chain of schools in the region. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a pseudonymous blog for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban occupation, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. Yousafzai rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.

On the afternoon of 9 October 2012, Yousafzai boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani district of Swat. A gunman asked for her by name, then pointed a pistol at her and fired three shots. One bullet hit the left side of Yousafzai’s forehead, travelled under her skin through the length of her face, and then went into her shoulder. In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, for intensive rehabilitation. On 12 October, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa against those who tried to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated their intent to kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai.

If the author being the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee—and winner—isn’t impetus enough to warrant seeing what this memoir is about, nothing arguably is. Famous for advocating for education for all—male and female, all around the world—and for surviving a roadside assassination attempt by the Taliban, who were unimpressed with her efforts, Malala Yousafzai is […]

2014 Nobel Peace Prize Winners

The Nobel Peace prize is a very important award given to particular people anywhere in the world who have worked to promote peace and understanding among nations. The prize is a HUGE honor and it is worth over $1 million! In the past, the prize has gone to famous presidents like Americans Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and South Africans F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. Organizations can win the award, too. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won for its work to help the environment. And Doctors Without Borders won for its work to take care of sick people around the world.

The 2014 award was announced this week. It is being given to two people and one is a 17-year-old girl! She is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient ever. Talk about Kid Power! Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi are the winners this year for “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

Satyarthi is an Indian children’s rights activist. He campaigns to help poor children who are forced to work as slaves in factories, to get them out of the factories and into school. Believe it or not, there are children who have to leave their parents to go work all day long in faraway factories. They never even have the chance to learn how to read much less borrow a book from a beautiful library. According to the Bachpan Bachao Andolan website (“Save the Childhood Movement” in English), Satyarthi has set up schools and rescued thousands of children out of this slavery.

Malala has also campaigned to help all children go to school. You may have heard of her since she was in the news a lot a couple of years ago. She was writing a blog about living under the Taliban in Pakistan, especially how they didn’t want girls to go to school. Malala went to school anyway and continued speaking out against the Taliban. The Taliban actually tried to kill her, but she survived and continues to speak out for girls’ right to go to school and get an education. How brave!

So you see it doesn’t matter how young you are. YOU can change the world! Leave a Comment and let us know how you’re inspired to make a difference!