Ruler of the Courtyard Hardcover – March 24, 2003

My 2nd grade students love this book. The girl's fear of chickens heightens her experience in the bathhouse. She imagines she sees a snake and the suspense builds. After she has faced her fears and trapped the "snake" she finds out that it was just the belt to Nani's trousers. Students were excited to talk about their own experiences of being afraid, for example, of the dark or monsters under the bed, and started to think of these experiences in a new way. Students felt happy and relieved at the end of the story when the girl celebrates having fought her fear, and triumphs...

we have many pakistani-american friends and my own parents moved to america from pakistan in the 1960's, so i was excited to see a picture book about a child from pakistan. my sons were also interested in reading a story which featured someone from the "motherland", but the same distressing thought came to child after child after child --- "why are people from pakistan shown as so ugly?" the illustrations leave A LOT to be desired...my boys didn't even want me to donate the book to their language arts class because they were ashamed that the unattractive faces of the characters would be considered to be representative of all pakistanis. (and this isn't just a matter of personal taste either --- balance and proportion and symmetry are considered to be the hallmarks of "beauty", yet for some reason none of those are evident here in the characters' facial features). it's too bad because the author really is talented and the story is sweet in itself.