It’s not every day, the Global Read Aloud gets to host a cover reveal, but today is one of those special day and boy, was it easy to say yes to this! In 2018, the middle grade choice for the year was Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed, a book that quickly took our GRA community with storm. Kids around the world learned about Pakistan, about the plight of indentured servants, about one girl’s courage to change not just her own life but the lives of others. We were enthralled, enriched, and invested and so many of us begged for more of Amal’s story. Well, Aisha Saeed heard us and in between all of her other writing, she wrote the story of Omar called “Omar Rising” to be released February 1st, 2022!

What is Omar Rising about?

In this compelling companion to New York Times bestseller Amal Unbound, Amal’s friend Omar must contend with being treated like a second-class citizen when he gets a scholarship to an elite boarding school.

Omar knows his scholarship to Ghalib Academy Boarding School is a game changer, providing him—the son of a servant—with an opportunity to improve his station in life. He can’t wait to experience all the school has to offer, especially science club and hopefully the soccer team; but when he arrives, his hopes are dashed. First-year scholarship students aren’t allowed to join clubs or teams—and not only that, they have to earn their keep doing menial chores. At first Omar is dejected—but then he gets angry when he learns something even worse—the school deliberately “weeds out” kids like him by requiring them to get significantly higher grades than kids who can pay tuition, making it nearly impossible for scholarship students to graduate. It’s a good thing that in his favorite class, he’s learned the importance of being stubbornly optimistic. So with the help of his tightknit new group of friends—and with the threat of expulsion looming over him—he sets out to do what seems impossible: change a rigged system.

Aisha Saeed on OMAR RISING:

Omar Rising is a story about just how high the stakes of education can be— especially for those whom it may be the only ladder out of their difficult circumstances. As the son of a servant, Omar is doing everything he can to succeed at his new boarding school so he can give his mother and himself a brighter future, but as he navigates his classes, he discovers exactly how unjust his new school is and the power of collective activism to affect change. While Omar’s story is set in Pakistan, as a former educator in the U.S., I’ve witnessed firsthand both the challenges— and the resiliency— of my students as they worked to overcome their own inequitable circumstances.

Are you ready for the cover reveal?

How can you pre-order it?

Please consider supporting your local independent book store to pre-order this book. You can also order it through Bookshop.org, a website dedicated to funnel book orders through local independent book stores and paying them a larger percentage than other known large scale book sites. However you choose to order it, I know one thing to be true; Aisha’s words changed so many perspectives in Amal Unbound, I know Omar Rising will change many too.

Happy reading!

Introducing this year’s shared resource document for ALL BOOKS – use this to share any resources you have found or created for the book(s) you are doing. If you want to change permissions on it, you need to make your own copy.

Go to the book tab you are doing and look at the resources already shared, feel free to also add anything you have you want to share whether it is ideas, slowchat information, postcard sign ups etc. Hopefully this will be an easier way for people to share rather than ideas getting lost on Facebook.

New this year is a place to search for connections as well, please add in your information if you would like others to connect with you and don’t feel like posting on Facebook. Each book has its own Google doc for this which is where you can post connections wanted, the document can be found within the shared resource document under each unique tab.

You can also keep posting connections wanted on Facebook but in case you don’t use it or find that confusing, I hope these resources will make your life easier.

I cannot wait for another year of Global Read Aloud! Which book will you be reading?

Are you ready for the next reveal? So far I have shared the following choices:

• Picture Book Author Study – Duncan Tonatiuh
• Early Reader’s Choice – Dragons in a Bag by Zetta Elliott
• Middle Grade Choice – The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

In a world that is upside down, still, I have found myself reaching for fantasy books more and more. As a way to learn about our past and consider our future, the realm of fantasy allows us to escape, dig in, and dream of what can be. While the worlds may be unfamiliar, their messages are not and we can find comfort, hope, joy, even in the darkest parts of their stories. Our Global Read Aloud choices offer up hope in the most human way; tales of overcoming, tales of finding your own strength, tales or relying on community to come together in order to defeat a common enemy. It is what the world has shown us in the past year as well, it is what has kept many afloat, many alive. And so we shall gather around these books and continue to build community. We shall share these read alouds as way to connect across city lines, country borders, and oceans. We shall hopefully find similarities within the heroic journeys of the stories we read that let us see how we, too, can be heroes in our way.

WHAT IS INFORMATION YOU MAY WANT RIGHT NOW?

• Kick off will be October 4th and the project will run for six weeks as usual, ending on November 12th. You can absolutely fall behind or start later, just don’t read ahead.
• The official hashtag for the year is #GRA21, other hashtags will be announced once all the books are.
• The hashtag for this book will be #GRABarren
• For a comprehensive FAQ post, go here
• To join the main Facebook group, please go here. To join the middle school Facebook group, please go here. This is where news will be posted for the most part.

SO WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S MIDDLE SCHOOL BOOK….

Narnia meets traditional Indigenous stories of the sky and constellations in an epic middle grade fantasy series from award-winning author David Robertson.

Morgan and Eli, two Indigenous children forced away from their families and communities, are brought together in a foster home in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They each feel disconnected, from their culture and each other, and struggle to fit in at school and at their new home — until they find a secret place, walled off in an unfinished attic bedroom. A portal opens to another reality, Askí, bringing them onto frozen, barren grounds, where they meet Ochek (Fisher). The only hunter supporting his starving community, Misewa, Ochek welcomes the human children, teaching them traditional ways to survive. But as the need for food becomes desperate, they embark on a dangerous mission. Accompanied by Arik, a sassy Squirrel they catch stealing from the trapline, they try to save Misewa before the icy grip of winter freezes everything — including them.

In 2020, I had the honor of listening to David speak at the incredible conference Reading for the Love of It in Toronto. In his personal presentation he shared these words, “With accurate representation in story we can offer kids the truth about their lives that we were never offered growing up…” and those words have traveled with me since. What we read matters so much to our students and to the lives that they give value in the world. What we experience together through our read alouds become the shared language we speak, the tapestry that weaves us together. I am, therefore, thrilled to be bringing his newest series, The Misewa Saga, into the Global Read Aloud. Through his writing he allows us all into a world centered in love, tradition, hope and survival. Following the voices of Morgan and Eli as they crawl through a portal to a snow-covered land, we see what hope does, what resilience and strength passed down through generations of persecution can do as they face the battles of a new world. It is a story centered in strength and one that I hope will inspire us all.

THE READING CALENDAR WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

Week 1: Oct. 4th – 8th : Chapters 1 – 5

Week 2: Oct. 11th – 15th: Chapters 6 – 10

Week 3: Oct. 18 – 22nd: Chapters 11 – 14

Week 4: Oct. 25th – 29th: Chapters 15 – 18

Week 5: Nov. 1st – 5th: Chapters 19 -22

Week 6: Nov. 8th – 12th: Chapters 23 – end

Don’t worry about falling behind, just don’t read ahead and if you need to start later, please do.

Please consider following David’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores.  If your school requires you to go through Amazon, please consider using this link to purchase the book in order to support the Global Read Aloud.

I hope you like these choices, and if not, that’s okay too, then come back next year.

Are you ready for the next reveal? So far I have shared the following choices:

• Picture Book Author Study – Duncan Tonatiuh
• Early Readers Chapter Books – Dragons in A Bag by Zetta Elliot

In a world that is upside down, still, I have found myself reaching for fantasy books more and more. As a way to learn about our past and consider our future, the realm of fantasy allows us to escape, dig in, and dream of what can be. While the worlds may be unfamiliar, their messages are not and we can find comfort, hope, joy, even in the darkest parts of their stories. Our Global Read Aloud choices offer up hope in the most human way; tales of overcoming, tales of finding your own strength, tales or relying on community to come together in order to defeat a common enemy. It is what the world has shown us in the past year as well, it is what has kept many afloat, many alive. And so we shall gather around these books and continue to build community. We shall share these read alouds as way to connect across city lines, country borders, and oceans. We shall hopefully find similarities within the heroic journeys of the stories we read that let us see how we, too, can be heroes in our way.

WHAT IS INFORMATION YOU MAY WANT RIGHT NOW?

• Kick off will be October 4th and the project will run for six weeks as usual, ending on November 12th. You can absolutely fall behind or start later, just don’t read ahead.
• The official hashtag for the year is #GRA21, other hashtags will be announced once all the books are.
• The hashtag for this book will be #GRAJumbies
• For a comprehensive FAQ post, go here
• To join the main Facebook group, please go here. To join the middle grade Facebook group, please go here. This is where news will be posted for the most part.

SO WHAT IS THIS YEAR’S MIDDLE GRADE BOOK….

Corinne La Mer claims she isn’t afraid of anything. Not scorpions, not the boys who tease her, and certainly not jumbies. They’re just tricksters made up by parents to frighten their children. Then one night Corinne chases an agouti all the way into the forbidden forest, and shining yellow eyes follow her to the edge of the trees. They couldn’t belong to a jumbie. Or could they?When Corinne spots a beautiful stranger at the market the very next day, she knows something extraordinary is about to happen. When this same beauty, called Severine, turns up at Corinne’s house, danger is in the air. Severine plans to claim the entire island for the jumbies. Corinne must call on her courage and her friends and learn to use ancient magic she didn’t know she possessed to stop Severine and to save her island home.

I have loved The Jumbies series for a long time and think that Tracey Baptiste is a national treasure, and for a long time I have wanted to use The Jumbies as one of our choices, well, this year feels like the right year. While this book may be a little bit scary for younger kids, it begs to be read aloud, discussed, lived in and also invites in beautiful conversations about finding your own strength, about folk and fairytales, about family and about love. It will draw in our readers with its action and mystery. It will leave us wanting to learn more.

The reading calendar will be as follows:

Week 1: Oct. 4th – 8th : Chapters 1 – 7

Week 2: Oct. 11th – 15th: Chapters 8 – 14

Week 3: Oct. 18 – 22nd: Chapters 15-21

Week 4: Oct. 25th – 29th: Chapters 22 – 26

Week 5: Nov. 1st – 5th: Chapters 27 – 39

Week 6: Nov. 8th – 12th: Chapters 40 – end

Don’t worry about falling behind, just don’t read ahead and if you need to start later, please do.

Please consider following Tracey’s work on social media and supporting your local independent bookstores with your book purchases. If you want to support the Global Read Aloud, please consider purchasing your books through the links placed here, the GRA gets a small affiliate percentage whenever books are purchased through Bookshop.org – a website that sends orders through local bookstores.  If your school requires you to go through Amazon, please consider using this link to purchase the book in order to support the Global Read Aloud.

I hope you like these choices, and if not, that’s okay too, then come back next year.