At the turn of the new year in 1948, Amil and his family are trying to make a home in India, now independent of British rule.
Both Muslim and Hindu, twelve-year-old Amil is not sure what home means anymore. The memory of the long and difficult journey from their hometown in what is now Pakistan lives with him. And despite having an apartment in Bombay to live in and a school to attend, life in India feels uncertain.
Nisha, his twin sister, suggests that Amil begin to tell his story through drawings meant for their mother, who died when they were just babies. Through Amil, readers witness the unwavering spirit of a young boy trying to make sense of a chaotic world, and find hope for himself and a newly reborn nation.
Author
Veera Hiranandani
Veera Hiranandani is the award-winning author of several books for young people. Her most recent middle-grade novel, Amil and The After, is a follow-up to her Newbery Honor winner, The Night Diary. The Night Diary also received the Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature, and several other honors and state reading list awards. Her middle-grade historical novel, How to Find What You’re Not Looking For, received the Sydney Taylor Book Award, the Jane Addams Book Award, and the New York Historical Society Children’s Book Prize among other accolades. She earned her MFA in fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. A former book editor, she’s now a faculty member with the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at The Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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