Thirst is a stand-alone, middle-grade novel that takes place in Mumbai, India. I don’t think Minni’s age was explicitly stated, but I extrapolated that she’s about twelve or thirteen years old. She lives in the city’s slums with her family. Her father runs a tea shop and works long hours, her mother is a part-time servant to a wealthy family while taking care of her own family, and her older brother, Sanjay, dreams of becoming a chef. Minni is a smart girl who attends a private school that was paid for by her mother’s employer, and she hopes that an education will someday help her get a well-paying job. For now, though, the family barely gets by, and each day Minni’s mother, like so many others in the neighborhood, must wait in line at the tap, sometimes for hours, to fill their buckets with water for the day. Even so, the water must still be boiled in order to be safe, which takes even more time. One evening, she and Sanjay go for a ride in a car that a friend’s father drives for rich people and end up in a place where they accidentally witness thieves stealing water. They get a good enough look at their leader that Sanjay and his friend must leave town, fearing for their lives. Shortly after, Minni’s mother falls ill and heads for her mother’s house in the country where she’ll have relatives to care for her. This leaves Minni alone with her father, and most of the chores her mother performed, as well as her mother's job, fall on Minni’s small shoulders. It’s a real challenge for her to keep up with all the work along with her studies, but it also gives her a greater appreciation of just how much her mom does for their family. While serving the family her mother worked for, Minni comes to realize that her employer’s husband is actually the leader of the water thieves, which is how he became so wealthy. This leaves Minni desperately wanting to seek justice but not sure who she can trust with the information she now knows. Lately I’ve been searching for more multicultural literature to add to my children’s book collection for my grandkids, and Thirst ended up being a very good choice that definitely fits the bill. It gives a great look at the Indian culture and the lives of the people who live there, particularly in the city slums. I like that in spite of where Minni’s family lives and all the hardships they have to endure, this isn’t a gloomy book at all. The family is quite close and clearly love each other very much. Even though Minni has to take on a heavy burden when her mother and brother must leave town, she never complains. She just tries to do her best and works hard. I love how the women in the neighborhood support her, too. It’s like all her neighbors are just one big, happy family. In fact, Minni thinks of all these women as her Aunties. I liked how the author contrasted Minni’s life with that of Pinky, the daughter of the woman she works for who is the same age as Minni. Even though they have a great deal more from a material standpoint, they don’t seem nearly as content as Minni and her family even though they’re poor. I also liked that Minni is a very smart girl who uses her brain to problem solve. The biggest problem she runs into is finding out her employer’s husband is a water mafia boss, and when she does, she takes her time to come up with a plan to try to get justice rather than running off with some half-baked idea. Another element I enjoyed was how the author made “thirst” a running theme with multiple meanings. It’s not only the shortage of clean water that Minni and her neighbors face while other are getting rich off the commodity, but also how she and Sanjay “thirst” for a better life and are willing to work hard to get there. I didn’t find anything that I thought could be objectionable to the middle-school audience at which it’s aimed other than a brief mention of a teenage boy Minni and Sanjay knew being killed, most likely by the water thieves. Overall, Thirst is a book that I can definitely recommend for kids to learn more about what life is like for a child their own age in a different country and how many people in the world can’t take clean water for granted. I also thought that Minni was a good role model for tweens, so I’ll definitely be acquiring a copy of this book, which I borrowed from the library, for my keeper shelf.

This book does a great job of bringing the realities of global poverty and lack of access to clean water home to its readers. Set in Mumbai, Minni is excelling at school, but a couple of things go wrong and this sends her family into a bit of a tailspin. I love how much this book centers community supporting and caring for its members. I love how Minni and Faiza have to be creative to get their voices heard and are seemingly successful at it. I loved how immersive the book is and how great it is at showing that everyone has dreams, no matter where they are in the moment. Well done.