Life in a war zone is a grim story. Jameela’s tale opens with her mother’s death. Mor provided the glue that held the family together, so it is not surprising that after her death everything deteriorates. Baba abandons Jameela on a street in Kabul, but this becomes her salvation when a caring shop keeper takes her to an orphanage. Jameela is a resilient girl whose Muslim faith intensifies as her life deteriorates. Readers are reassured by her decisions and strength, so they close the book hopeful. Like Patricia McCormick’s Sold (2006), Wanting Mor is a fictionalized view of many girls’ reality rooted in their families’ extreme poverty. lmp

Based on a true story, Jameela, a young girl living in war-torn Afghanistan, must struggle to find her place in the world after her mother dies and she is moved to Kabul with her drunken father where she clashes with her mean stepmother and ends up in an orphanage run by the same army who was responsible for killing members of her family.