Written by Saadia Faruqi
Maha’s grandmother (Dadi) is coming from Pakistan to live with her family and Maha is NOT happy about it. She must give up her room and move to the attic. Then she finds out that she is going to be responsible for hanging out with Dadi for a couple hours every day. Ugh! She wants to hang out with Kim and the rest of her friends, not an old lady. Maha wants to be a journalist more than anything in the world. When she is given an assignment to do a paper for school, she cannot figure out what to do it on. While hanging out with her Dadi she discovers that she is really cool and knows a lot about things that happened where she is from. Maha decides wants to know the history of her family. She starts asking Dadi questions and recording the answers. She soon learns that her Dadi was a little girl during “Partition.” Her Dadi’s family lives in peace with the other religions in their little town, but now because of Partition, everyone must move immediately to a different city or face violence. She tells the story of how her family must take only what they can and flee by train. She then loses most of her family to disease as they are traveling. She understands that her Dadi is still broken because of Partition so Maha decides to do her project on it. She also learns about Ramadan, the fasting, the prayers, and the joy. She starts to pray and for the first time participates in Ramadan. As she gets closer to her Dadi and to her family history, she puts everything into the Partition Project. She does such an amazing job that her project is a Youtube hit and the local news picks it up. Even though her project is a huge success, she learns that family and friendship is what life is really about. This is a book for students in not only learning about the Partition project but the holiday of Ramadan as well.
Reviewed by Christie Haslam, Librarian, Gearld Wright Elementary
Review shared in March 2024
Rating: ★★★★★ (5 stars)
Interest Level: Grades 4-8
The Partition Project
Written by Saadia Faruqi
Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
404 pages
Release Date: February 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780063115811
A review copy was provided by the publisher.
