 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today I'm here to talk to you about Noura and the Immortal Palace by M. T. Khan, which is a beautiful middle grade story that I want to say might have been Ashley or it could have been someone else who was talking about it. And it was a book that I managed to find as an audio book on Libby as part of one of my local library systems. And so I was able to borrow it out and listen to the story because I wasn't able to get my hands on a physical copy of it. So this book is about Noura, I think is living in rural Pakistan. And she and her siblings live with her mother, and their father has previously passed away, and her mother has to work multiple jobs, and Noura herself is working in the local mines where they hire children to dig deeper and deeper in the mines. And Noura is determined to find one of the biggest, most well-known treasures that's kind of like an urban legend in her community. And she wants to find it because she wants to bring in enough money to support her mother and her family. One day, this need to find this treasure just overcomes her and she ends up digging deeper and deeper until there is a cave-in in the mine where she's digging. And she unexpectedly discovers this portal to an alternate world where the gin live. And her people have this story that every person has a gin and that gin looks like them, but is the opposite of them and that the gin like to play tricks on them. So when Noura falls into this world, she ends up becoming trapped there and she doesn't know how to react around the gin. And so they use that to force her into situations that she wouldn't have normally gotten herself into. And she has to find a way out. She's not the only child from our world trapped there. And so they have to band together to try and work this out. And they have a limited time period because after a certain number of days there, you begin to lose your memories of the real world. And so you become stuck. This world was gorgeous and vibrant and chaotic and just full of magic and life about trying to gain the most power. It's a beautiful own voices Muslim middle grade story. It's a fantastic fantasy. I know when I was reading the blurb for the book, there was sort of a tagline that it's like Arusha or in the end of time. And it did have that feeling for me. I have read that many years ago. It does have that lush fantasy setting. I really enjoyed the exploration of the gin myth because obviously I know the westernized versions of the gin, but to see it portrayed in a different way. Like this is the first time I've seen it as them being alter egos of people. And the way that that was incorporated was really interesting. And also the gin live in this luxury hotel, which I thought was a really cool concept, because you get this idea of just how power hungry they are and how eager they are to climb the perceived social ladder and acquire more power. And this beautiful lush hotel also has an underside because you have all of these human children who are essentially forced to work as servants and slaves. And obviously that opens up a really amazing conversation to have with kids around child slavery and child labor laws and how in some places of the world there are no restrictions in place to safeguard children. So it's a really great conversation starter. And there's also some really great discussions around the value of education because Nura doesn't attend school. She doesn't believe that school or getting an education is going to help her and her family get out of the situation they're in. She thinks that working in the mines and earning money is going to do that. And so there's this conflict through the story as she has to learn what education actually is because she doesn't really know. She's never been to school. There's also some discussion in here around Eid because some of the children who are trapped in the alternate world are there during Eid and there's some very bittersweet scenes as they're celebrating Eid but remembering the family that they have on the other side through this portal that they've travelled through and how even though they are, they have found a way to celebrate, they are not celebrating in the way that they would like to. And again, it was really nice to read about Muslim culture being incorporated into a fantasy setting for kids and explaining it more and making it accessible to people to understand different cultures. To me that is really important to see in these stories that we get these own voices authors telling these stories because it does help us to understand more. Obviously this book does come with some content or trigger warnings in terms of there is the death of a parent that happens off page. It's historical so it doesn't happen on page but it is mentioned. You have child labor and child exploitation on page. There's also discussions of grief and also lots of discussions around financial stress which could be triggering for some kids and their families but this was just a really great middle grade story. I'm so glad that I read it and that I'd heard about it and was able to find a copy of it to read because I had never seen this mentioned anywhere and I know so many kids who would love to read this as a fantasy book because it does stand on its own. It is not overly long but it is rich and vibrant and fun and adventurous and you have a heroine who learns a lot along the way. So I'll leave links to where you can find out more information about Nora and the Immortal Palace down below. If you've read this story I would love to hear your thoughts on it or chat to you about it or if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave your favorite food emoji down below because there are plenty of descriptions of feasts and food in this book so feel free to share your favorite food emoji down below. I hope that we're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.