ELA Big Read and Author Webinar

The 2024-2025 ELA Big Read is The Balloon Thief. The text is Aneesa Marufu‘s debut novel and was published in 2022 with support from the Kimberley Chambers Kickstart Prize for underrepresented writers.

The ELA Honor Society is thrilled to announce that Aneesa Marufu will join us for a webinar in November—an ideal chance for your students to ask an author their burning questions! More details will follow soon.

Aneesa’s novel, The Balloon Thief, offers vivid descriptions of a pre-Islamic South Asian fantasy inspired by traditional mythology. The story alternates between two main characters, Khadija and Jacob. Aimed at readers aged 12 to 16, the book explores themes like belief and faith, mythology, storytelling, escape, friendship, hatred, oppression, revolution, and magic. These themes help readers understand our ever-changing world.

Reviewers praise the book for making readers think while immersing them in a thrilling tale. The characters’ physical and mental journeys highlight their struggle to find a place in a world that resists them. Aneesa Marufu describes her book as a battle of identity and loneliness, a journey to find one’s place and seek acceptance. She highlights how recent global attention on bigotry and prejudice, particularly racism, has exposed the ugliness of these issues, providing both liberation and a much-needed reckoning.

Find out more about the ELA Big R ead, The Balloon Thief (also published in the USA as Rebel of Fire and Flight) and Aneesa Marufu.