Review of Kalayla

[Desi Lemman]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Kalayla" by Jeannie Nicholas.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Kalayla is a young girl with the energy of 10 men and the intelligence of a grown adult. Her excess energy and intelligence make her a handful to manage. So her mother leaves her to do all the growing up that she needs to do with no interference from her. So if she wants a job watching clothes at the local laundromat, she can get it. If she wants to live her life without friends or being noticed, no one can tell her to do otherwise. She is as free as a bird. But her freedom at such an early age may just be the key recipe for her downfall in life.

Lena, the landlady of the apartment that Kalayla and her mum live in, sees this and decides to do something about it. She makes moves to take both Kalayla and her young mother under her motherly wing and see how things progress. But merely weeks after her encounter with Kalayla, dark truths about Kalayla's mum's family are uncovered. Lena is not spared the surprise as she experiences things that she would have never guessed in a million years.

The book that tells this surprising story was titled Kalayla and it was written by Jeannie Nicholas. It tells stories of racism and the problems that it causes. It shows the needlessness of hating someone just because of the color of their skin. I also liked that it addresses the difficulty of parenting. Many people today peddle the false claim that being a parent is the easiest thing in the world. It shows how difficult it is to raise a child without help (regardless of the gender of the parent or the ward). I also like that it shows the abuse that many people (especially women) go through in their relationships. It expressly shows their fear and emotional turmoil. I like all the lessons that it teaches.

I did not dislike anything in Kalayla at all. I found this book to be a treasure that should be celebrated across the globe. The lessons it teaches are lessons that everyone, young and old, should learn. To add more points to it, the author ensured that it was exceptionally well-edited.

Kalayla, whom this book was named after, is my favorite thing about this book. I found myself loving her, her intelligence, and her energy. It is not every day, not even in the fictional world, that we see an 11-year-old girl display the intelligence of an adult. I greatly loved seeing her grow in this book. Although some stages of her growth were painful to read about, they were still beautiful and very realistic.

In conclusion, Kalayla was error-free, or exceptionally edited, interesting, educative, beautiful, and extraordinarily precious. The plot developed at a steady pace that shows the present and the past. It is a good book. So I rate it four out of four stars. I recommend it to anyone interested in books that show the amount of damage that racism and abuse can do to its recipient.

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Kalayla
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