"Young girl, you were not born only to cook..."

Who has not heard of Malala Yousafzai? Her courage, her clarity, her vision so startling for someone so young?Here is a book by the father who has stood at her side all along. Excerpt from a poem by Malala's father that serves as an epigraph:

Young girl, you were not born only to cook. Your youth is not to be ruined. You were not born a victim, were not born as an instrument for a man's enjoyment.

And this from the opening chapter...

I was going to be a father who believed in equality, and believes in a girl as she grows into a woman, and who raises her so that she believes in herself, so that in her life she can be free as a bird.

Malala herself, the world's youngest Nobel laureate, continues to speak eloquently of her journey and her vision for the world's girl children. Her father's book is worth reading in tandem with Malala's own picture book, Malala's Magic Pencil, illustrated with a suitably delicate touch by Kerascoët, the husband-and-wife illustrator team Sébastien Cosset and Marie Pommepuy.