Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi, Shazleen Khan

 
Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi, Shazleen Khan
My Rating: ★★★★★

Zara and Zeeshan are twins who never get along. All they do is fight and poke fun at each other. Things come to a head when they go on a trip to Florida. What is supposed to be a trip to celebrate their mom and the ceremony she’s being awarded at quickly goes south when their bickering finally becomes too much. The punishment? No phones! Now they’re forced to be in each other’s company without a buffer. Everything changes when they find a sick turtle, Sunshine, which gets them to slowly put aside their differences.

This is such an amazing book following twins, Zara and Zeeshan, who are similar yet very different. Because of this, all they do is butt heads left and right! However, they don’t realize they’re much more alike than they could ever see. They’re both very passionate about their interests and very caring people, so it was great to see them slowly bond throughout the book. Saadia captures their sibling dynamic extremely well. It was very realistic!

The book also captures the struggles of the siblings as well as their family very well, but also light enough for the young readers this is aimed at. We see how they face prejudice and racism as well as how even Zara’s friends treated her differently when she started wearing a hijab. The book keeps it light enough for young readers, but older readers can easily pick up how much depth there is to the prejudice and racism they face.

All in all, this is a wonderful book. I loved seeing how passionate Zara was about animals and Zeeshan is about space, so it was wonderful seeing them bond with each other about their differences and similarities. It also deals with prejudice and racism in a way that’s easy for young readers to digest and also feel seen and noticed if they have already experienced it themselves. The artwork is beautiful and helps give even more depth to the story. I highly recommend this book!