The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman will see a paperback edition in August of 2022. This story is about how some Afghan girls are able to achieve an education. Once a week, a young girl’s mother, in the dark of the morning, takes a special bus with no seats but a lot of books off to a village and the refugee camp. Pari’s (our young narrator) mother also teaches the children the English alphabet. We, and Pari, learn a little about why this is happening, how the mother was able to learn to read when she grew up in a time that did not want women to learn or have an education.
Gabrielle Grimard’s illustrations are amazingly detailed, colorful, pop off the page and are also cozy, delightful and warm. They help support the story, but also can be read on their own. Due to the details and expressiveness of the background, they should be enjoyed slowly. In fact, as should the text due to its longer nature. The publisher description calls them “pensive and captivating art.”
Rahman’s stories are based in the current events of a country that has been devastated by war, and this picture books story was inspired by the first library bus of Kabul, Afghanistan and personal family backgrounds. This was his first picture book, and the follow up is A Sky-Blue Bench which I have also reviewed. Both books have a similar tone, but The Library Bus is slightly more serious in its overall tone. Both books work well for the five and up crowd, and would be great for a classroom.
