It Ain't So Awful, Falafel

Angebote / Angebote:

Eleven-year-old Zomorod Yousefzadeh and her family are moving from Compton to Newport Beach, California. It is her eighth move. At her old schools, Zomorod was a shy, brainy loner--but this time, as she starts sixth grade in yet another new city, she is determined to reinvent herself. For starters, she's getting rid of her alphabet-trainwreck of a name, and telling everyone to call her Cindy (after the youngest girl on "The Brady Bunch"). Replacing her seized-goods auction bedroom furniture with a matching canopy bed set from Sears is another step in the right direction, the fact that her family now lives in a modern-looking condo with a pool should help, too. She's feeling prepared, almost confident, about embracing her new identity. And then a girl her age rings the condo doorbell, smiles, and says, "Hi, I'm Cindy. I live next door." This is just the beginning of Z's painfully awkward entry into middle school as the new, foreign kid. To make matters worse, her home country, Iran, is suddenly in the news as protests erupt, the monarch is overthrown, and American hostages are taken. Now her American classmates' former indifference to her nationality is replaced by suspicion, and someone starts leaving hateful notes on her family's doorstep--which she desperately hides from her already-worried parents. Even her favorite Beach Boys song, "Barbara Ann, " is ruined when a parody song called "Bomb Iran" plays constantly on the radio.