Noor and Sal live in the desert town of Juniper, California. As part of the tiny Muslim community, they are treated as outsiders in school. Their lives have been filled with trouble and tragedy, but they have grown up almost as brother and sister under the loving eye of Sal’s mother Misbah. It is the voices of these three complex and wonderfully-developed characters that narrate this engrossing YA title.
It’s 1942 and Nisha has travelled a long way. Her first journey takes her from a privileged and happy childhood in Malaya to the stark, grey, frightening home of her grandmother on England’s Barrow Island. Her other journey is from a child refugee suffering from PTSD, barely able to speak, to a blossoming young girl who has found courage, hope, and honesty. Both journeys are cleverly and intricately woven together.
Amundsen’s Way is aptly titled. It is the story of a man so single-minded and driven that there is simply no other way but his way. It is the true story, told as fiction, of the Norwegian explorer’s grit and persistence as he leads his team to be the first men to reach the South Pole in December 1911.
Set a hundred years after our current Tech Age, Tom Huddleston’s Flood World touches on many issues that are relevant today. There is an overriding Them vs Us theme in this story, which has come about as the result of a catastrophic rise in sea levels. London is divided in two: there are those who live a life of privilege, secure on dry land behind the giant Wall, and those who are kept outside the Wall, living in squalor in the Shanties, floating slums where everything is in short supply.
