Winner of the Middle East Book Award Youth Fiction category Jameela lives with her mother and father in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that there is no school in their poor wartorn village and Jameela lives with a birth defect that has left her with a cleft lip she feels relatively secure sustained by her faith and the strength of her beloved mother Mor. But when Mor suddenly dies Jameelas father impulsively decides to seek a new life in Kabul. He remarries a situation that turns Jameela into a virtual slave to her demanding stepmother. When the stepmother discovers that Jameela is trying to learn to read she urges her father to simply abandon the child in Kabuls busy marketplace. Jameela ends up in an orphanage. Throughout it all it is the memory of Mor that anchors her and in the end gives Jameela the strength to face her father and stepmother when fate brings them into her life again. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language ArtsCCSS.ELALITERACY.RL.5.3Compare and contrast two or more characters settings or events in a story or drama drawing on specific details in the text e.g. how characters interact.CCSS.ELALITERACY.RL.5.6Describe how a narrators or speakers point of view influences how events are described.CCSS.ELALITERACY.RL.6.3Describe how a particular storys or dramas plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.CCSS.ELALITERACY.RL.6.6Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.