Saturday, August 13, 2016

Mission Mumbai by Mahtab Narsimhan

Grade 5 and Up 
Aspiring photographer Dylan Moore jumps at the chance to join his best friend, Rohit Lal, on a family trip to India. But each boy comes to the trip with a problem: Rohit is desperate to convince his parents not to leave him behind in Mumbai with his aunt to finish school, and Dylan is desperate to stay in India to prove himself as a photographer and to avoid his parents’ constant fighting. Keeping their struggles to themselves threatens to tear the boys apart. Can Dylan and Rohit set aside their differences to navigate India safely, confront their family issues, and salvage their friendship.

This book describes everything you would ever want to know about India and its culture. If you ever visit India you should probably learn about Indian culture before hand so you don’t offend anyone there.
Example: It might be hard to believe but in India cows are sacred. Cows have the right of way and if one is sitting in the road, people just go around it.

I don’t know about you but this book pretty much discouraged me from ever visiting India (And I’ve never wanted to go in the first place). For one thing, there are way way too many people. In the book it’s said that about 1 billion people live there and they don’t seem to like outsiders. A second thing, there is way too much filth. If you read this book you’ll find out just how much filth there is but I won’t go into detail.

In this story, I’ve found the cruelest, most vile villain, Anjali, Rohit’s aunt. From what I can tell she’s obsessed with her brother, Robit’s father, and she saw his marriage to Rohit’s mother as his love being taken away from her. She tries to keep Rohit in Indian to live with her, I think, just to spite her brother’s wife and I don’t think Anjali even likes Rohit. She kind of reminds me of an Indian Cruella de Vil, who in my opinion is the most evil of all the Disney villains.

Also, you’re on your own pronouncing any Indian word because I have no idea. I don’t even know how to pronounce ‘Rohit’.

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