A Sky-Blue Bench

I am a fan of Bahram Rahman’s books because his stories about Afghanistan are always told with a direct, matter-of-fact tone. “A Sky-Blue Bench” is another book from him that will stay close to my heart.

This story is about Aria who has a helper-leg after an accident. She returns to school after recuperating and finds out that her classroom doesn’t have a bench because during the war, all wooden furniture had been burned to keep houses warm. With her helper-leg, sitting down on the tarp is very difficult. With her mother’s encouragement and Kaka Najar’s guidance, she collects discarded wooden boards and pieces of chairs and makes her own blue bench.

Do read the author’s note – Bahram always adds extra layers of meaning through peritext. This book again, is a classic example of why #ownvoices matter. The illustrations are lovely too, and I loved the illustrated-dissimilar front and back endpapers.

I couldn’t help but notice the absence of the male adult within the family - in this book as well as “The Library Bus”. In both books, the protagonist’s mother appears to be the ‘head of the family’ figure, the change-maker, and why not, because as Aria said, girls can do anything a boy can!