
When an exotic new girl starts at Leila’s private school, Leila feels less alone. Sask. is from Switzerland, and gorgeous, and immediately befriends Leila. But it feels like something more than friendship… Leila has never felt this way before. She ditches soccer to try out for the school play alongside Saskia. But Leila still isn’t ready for anyone to know she’s a lesbian, and she isn’t sure Saskia is the best person to keep her secret…
This book will appeal to teens because the story is easy to get caught up in, but to be superficial, I have to say the pink cover might be a turn-off. This book would be great for girls and boys to enjoy, but every edition I could find a photo of had the signature pink cover. When it comes to an attention-grabbing color, pink is it. But when it comes to a book you’d want to be caught reading in high school, regardless of your gender, pink looks fairly immature. If teens can get past the cover and read the jacket copy, however, I think they’ll be hooked.
Leila had a secret that she wasn’t ready to share, but found that things weren’t so bad in the end. Have teens write down a secret on a small slip of paper. They can disguise their writing or write with their other hand if they don’t want to be identified. Teens can roll up or fold their secrets and place them in a jar, which will be sealed so not even the librarian can open it! It’s surprising how much lighter you might feel after getting your secret out - even if no one knows it.
If you’re lucky enough to have an especially open group of teens, share the secrets instead of sealing the jar! Have the teens leave the room and post all of the secrets on a bulletin board. When the teens come back in, they can read all of the secrets—silently! No calling out guesses or accusations of who wrote what.
Amirrezvani, Anita and Persis Karim. Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers.
Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2013. Print.
Ansari, Maboud. The Iranian Americans: A Popular Social History of a New American Ethnic
Group. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013. Print.
Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. New York:
Random House, 2004. Print.
Dumas, Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of a Global Citizen. New York:
Random House, 2009. Print.
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, 2008.
Print.
(2015): 106. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 June 2015.
Readers, 2014. Print.