BOOK CLUB IN ASIA

For our Book Club, we typically have books picked out for each country we plan to visit. Unfortunately, we struggled to find middle-grade books for Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. Instead, we chose two books written by an Asian author named Aisha Saeed. The titles of these two books, Omar Rising and Amal Unbound, state the names of the main characters, who are actually best friends.

The first book is Omar Rising, which is about a boy and his friends who go to a school on scholarships. The principal has a few unfair rules for scholarship students, including things like no extracurricular activities, unfair scores on tests, and extra chores in the kitchen. Omar and his friends protested and they convinced the school board to overturn the rules.

The second book is Amal Unbound. It is about Amal and her family. One day Amal stands up to the horrible village landlord, so she is forced to work as a servant for him as a punishment. In the end, they got him arrested for doing bad things and she lived happily ever after.

I loved these two books and I particularly loved the cover illustrations on both. They were both very inspiring and sweet stories. I highly recommend them both, but Amal Unbound was my favorite because, duh, girl power!