Shortlisted at Rotherham Children's Book Awards

Secrets of the Henna Girl has been selected for the Rotherham Children's Book Awards shortlist. That's the third award selection for the book since publication.
Very happy and honoured.

I also want to share these two new messages I received from fans of the book.

1. The first one is from 11 year old Laila Ahmed Baghdadi at Thetherdown Primary School who read the book and wrote this poem. (yes she really is 11).
I met her through a school visit organised by the South Asian Literature Festival.

A poem on how Zeba is feeling on the car journey on the way to the airport:

All the emotions bubbling furiously within me

Nerves and intrigue skipping through my veins

Taya - ij brings a tremble to my mind

I wish I could just stay

Cars and pavement rushing past my window

Into the distance they race while my heart thumps louder

Potions, spices and vivid Sari's all await me

Although my modest hometown chippie is were I long to be

Tangled in a mass of confusion

Impatient to see what the future brings

Observing my parents closely

Now boarding the plane with curiousity 

2. A lovely email from a young student called Adam Agowun from Parmiters School in Watford who has kindly given permission to share his message.

Hi,
You may not remember me, but you came to my school, Parmiters in Watford, on Monday 14th January. I was sitting at the front and I would like to once again say thank you for coming, but also that your book was amazing. it was even so good, that my mum, who never has time to read anything, sat down every evening just to read it! I hope you come back to our school, maybe to talk about a new book?
 
All the best
Regards,
Adam Agowun

Thank you Adam and Laila. I'm trying to finish the new book right now.

7 Stories

Had the pleasure of working with Seven Stories again which is the National Centre for Children's Books.
The lovely team arranged author visits in Durham and Newcastle before showing me around their wonderful building where I met the giant Grufflalo (forgot to take pic when I hugged him).
But here's a couple of pics from my work with 7Stories.

above pic at a school with Year 9 in Newcastle in 2013
bottom pic at Diverse Talks author event with witer Zahid Khan arranged by 7Stories in Manchester in 2012

North East Teen Book Award

Just returned from Newcastle where I attended the North East Teen Book Awards. I was delighted that Secrets of the Henna Girl was on a shortlist with five other books. The awards night was fab despite the fact that some of the people couldn't make it from the other cities and towns due to the snow.
Thank you to Eileen Earmstrong for organising the whole event. Eileen does it every year and her hard work means that the awards has a reputation for being highly respected.
It was also wonderful to spend time with the other shortlisted authors. Chris Priestly, Dave Cousins, Elizabeth Wein, fellow Puffin author Louisa Reid and of course the winner, Teri Terry.

India is the worst place to be born a girl

India is the worst place to be born a girl.

So begins chapter four of my new as yet untitled and unpublished novel. It is the voice of my sixteen year old protagonist who speaks to the reader about the horrors experienced by many Indian girls. 

Here’s an unedited paragraph:

I mean, really, to be the biggest democracy in the world and yet we are lumped with Saudi Arabia where women can’t leave their homes unaccompanied or drive, Afghanistan where the Taliban ...well ... do we really need to go there, and war torn Congo which is the rape capital of the world. Hard to believe I know  but where else in the world are girls sold off to settle a debt, engaged as toddlers and married off before reaching puberty , burned alive for non payment of dowries and sexually harassed every single day  ... and let’s not forget the girls who were not even allowed to be born. There are millions of them, aborted for being an xx chromosome rather than an xy.

I’ve been researching the treatment of women in the world’s biggest democracy. The picture is not pretty. It is so bad in fact that India was voted the worse place to be born a girl in a poll of G20 countries in 2012. The poll no doubt irritated a few Indians but hardly made any headlines. A few months on and the news story splashing globally is the gang rape of a 23 year old paramedical student on a moving Delhi bus on Sunday night (16 dec). 

Here’s some background: After watching a film the girl and her 27 year old male friend  boarded a private bus at night outside a well-known city mall. Six men on the bus raped the girl and beat up her friend before throwing them both out onto the road. The girl is in intensive care with injuries so severe that she has had to have her intestines removed.

Scan the world section on news websites and we see an India in uproar. Women activists are demonstrating on streets, the President of the ruling Congress party Sonia Ghandi has visited the victim and there are public calls for the death penalty to be given to the accused. Amidst all this is the raging debate about why the rape occurred in the first place. Shockingly blame is being placed left, right and centre but not directly at the rapists. To list a few: Bollywood with its sexy dance numbers is ‘creating’ sexual urges in men, Indian women are aping western clothing and therefore inviting men’s advances and the most pathetic of excuses - young men marginalised by the globalisation of India who need to vent their frustration at the successful Indian woman. 

Somehow the debate has become all about how women ‘tempt’  or ‘cause’ the men to commit rape as though the latter are animals with no control over their sexual urges. I won’t deny that the rapists demonstrated animalistic behaviour, but I completely reject the idea that they had no choice in the matter. They could have chosen not to rape the woman but they did. 

Why?

They did it because India’s patriarchal society views its women as second class citizens and not equal human beings. Sons are placed on pedestals whilst daughters are seen as burdens and commodities. If I need to convince you of this then please re-read the paragraph from my book above. 

The Delhi bus rape was not a sex crime. It was a gender crime. It was about the power and control that the privileged male feels he is entitled to. It had nothing to do with sexual urges or mental images of a Bollywood heroine sashaying to the camera.

Evidence of this can be found in the fact that the girl was violated with an iron rod. Where is the eroticism in that level of violence?

Published Writer of the Year 2012

Very pleased to have received the award for Published Writer of the Year at the 2012 Brit Writers Awards in London on the 1st of December for Secrets of the Henna Girl.

An Indian trip

Brr! Britain feels cold.

I’ve just returned from a gloriously hot India where I was promoting Secrets of the Henna Girl. Thank you to Penguin India for organising the book signings across Mumbai.

 At the Kitab Khana bookshop at Flora Fountain in Mumbai.

Gorgeous old world style decor inside. Would recommend all book lovers to visit if ever in Mumbai.

In a rickshaw in Bandra, Mumbai.

I also spent time conducting research for my new book. 

My as yet untitled novel is part set in Mumbai and part set in London. My main character resides in an area which much of the world would call a ‘slum’ but which its residents actually call a ‘township’ in the heart of Mumbai.

Dharavi is the place. Here are some pics that I took on my visit. 

A regular home in Dharavi

No room to sit inside the 6 by 4 home

The kitchen inside

A queue for kerosene fuel

Dharavi mosque...most residents are Muslim

 This is Laxmi who works for the Acorn Foundation. She is a single mother who lives in a 6 by 4 space which she calls home. Her daughter attends the local government school and hope to become a doctor one day. One of the most surprising discoveries of my visit was the aspirations held by the residents. Despite their humble origins, the people I met were dreaming and working for a better life. 

Thank you to Vinod Shetty for answering all my questions and helping me make sense of the contradiction that is Dharavi. 

Vinod leads a project called Acorn Foundation which encourages young slum kids who work as ragpickers to get involved in activities like football, art and music, and then veer them towards education. If you’d like to make a donation to encourage slum children to read and write, see their website: www.dharaviproject.org

A library provided by Acorn Foundation

Slum kids expressing themselves through art

Mentoring on the London Eye

The EDF London Eye, the Egyptian pyramids, the Empire State Building and other sites around the world were lit up in pink on October 11th 2012, to celebrate the first ever International Day of the Girl.
One in three girls around the world is denied an education by poverty, discrimination and violence. With education and the right support, girls can choose their own future and be a force for change. 

As I made my way to the London Eye early on Thursday morning to take part in a mentoring session with young school girls, I couldn't help thinking of Malala Yousafzai, the fourteen year old girl shot two days earlier for wanting an education in Pakistan. I pray she recovers soon.

Here I am marking the day with the wonderful children's charity Plan UK, on the London Eye and at the Southbank.

In a pod on the London Eye with girls from a London school and some very impressive women from the world of TV, radio and publishing.

Sarah Brown talking about the difference that education can make to a girl's life chances.

with the lovely Fiona Phillips, TV presenter and Plan UK ambassador.