Homeless Bird

please don't arrange my marriage. and if you must, please don't marry me off to some sickly bitchy thing who will soon die and trap me in my inlaws' house where i will be a burden and where they will treat me like a servant but i won't have anywhere else to go until they in turn ditch me in some cree......more

I know this book is probably for like middle schoolers but I loved it. Koly's parents marry her off without seeing the groom and she ends up married to a sick boy whose parents needed the dowry money for his treatment. It all works out as well as you'd expect but eventually she rebuilds her life. I......more

"I stitched the marketplace stalls heaped with turmeric and cinnamon and cumin and mustard. I embroidered vegetable stalls with purple eggplants and green melons." Gloria Whelan-Homeless Bird "Immediately I knew that it would be the homeless bird, flying at last to it's home." Gloria Whelan-Homeless Bi......more

This 40-year-old read Whelan's Homeless Bird aloud to her 12-year-old and 9-year-old, and we were all transfixed from the first few pages. I worried that the story might become so dark that I had to edit portions on the fly, but Whelan manages to present dangerous and tragic circumstances in a way t......more