With an economy of words, unembellished language and her signature flat, child-centric illustrations, Jeanette Winter (The Librarian of Basra) creates a quietly magnificent tribute to two extraordinary human beings.
The front-to-back story features Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old Pakistani pro-education activist who survived the Taliban's attempt on her life and is the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The reverse tale tells of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy who escaped slavery and became an anti-childhood-bondage activist; he was killed at the age of 12 in 1995. Winter smoothly joins them together in the center spread.
Malala's story opens as her would-be assassin descends upon her school van, then backtracks to tell how she spoke out repeatedly against the Taliban's ban on educating girls. It concludes with Malala's 2013 address to the United Nations, as a kite flies above her, a symbol of rising above suffocating strictures. A carpet boss yanks four-year-old Iqbal from playing with his kite and shackles him to a loom, bonded by a $12 loan to his parents. After six years, the boy learns that peshgi--the loans that create bondage--have been outlawed. He starts school and speaks out about the evils of child slavery. Iqbal is shot while riding his bicycle; a kite ascends above 800 mourners at his funeral.
In a luminous center spread, Malala and Iqbal stand on mountains, flying kites that dance across to the other's side. Coupling the stories creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. --Allie Jane Bruce, children's librarian, Bank Street College of Education