80 Books No. 11: Iqbal by Francesco D’Adamo

 

I teach English and I love books. A surprising amount of the time, however, I teach books I have dubious feelings towards. If any of my colleagues read this, they may or may not be surprised to know that:

 

- I tolerate Holes by Louis Sachar because the kids enjoy it.

- I find Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo really slow and only really enjoy the war bits at the end. The whole drama with the dog in the middle makes me switch off.

- Our Day Out by Willy Russell is fun to read but I can never think of anything to actually do with it in class.

- Stone Cold by Robert Swindells I actually quite enjoy.

- The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne is okay, even if it does use up all of your oxygen supplies if you try and read it aloud because the sentences are so long.

In reality, if I had to read any of the books I teach out of choice, I’d limit myself to reading The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men, and possibly go and see Journey’s End. Apart from that, they don’t exactly set my heart alight.

So I was probably the wrong choice to sample Iqbal from any perspective, but I gave it a go. It’s based on the real life story of Iqbal Masih, a boy who escaped from a life of child labour in Pakistan in the 90s and worked to help liberate others from similar lives. Narrated by a fictional character, it details how he helped lead others to freedom.

The positives of the book are that it is reasonably short, an easy read, widens your horizons to other cultures and has a very good scheme of work on the Oxford University Press website. This in itself is a god’s send because else I’d be in the same position as with Our Day Out.

The negatives for me were that I just didn’t care what happened to any of the characters, and that in itself is a terrible thing to admit; these were real people or at least based upon real people, and yet I was turning pages with little to no emotional connection. I feel more for Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and I mostly think of him as an idiot. Iqbal, in this book, irritated me intensely and I felt slightly guilty about that. Perhaps it was this which made me dislike the book so much: I don’t like books which make me feel guilty for something which isn’t my fault, namely, the writer’s inability to make me connect with a character.

Because of the scheme of work, this is still a possibility to be taught. Maybe I need to read it a couple more times and really study it to appreciate it. Maybe if I enjoy teaching it my opinion will change.

Or maybe I just need to realise it’s not aimed at me anyway.