A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan, Read by Nikhaar Kishani and Caitlin Kelly

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Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan collaborate on A Place at the Table, a timely story about first-generation immigrants finding their place as they navigate the challenges of sixth grade. Nikhaar Kishani is the voice of Sara, daughter of Pakistani immigrants and a recent transfer from a small Islamic academy to a huge public school. Nikhaar smoothly narrates Pakistani words used in the text and uses subtle accents for Sara’s family, and listeners will feel for Sara as she uses sarcasm as a shield to hide her loneliness. Sara and her classmate Elizabeth pair up in an after-school cooking club and discover they have more in common than they thought, and slowly become friends. Caitlin Kelly has a bright and youthful voice as she voices Elizabeth, whose parents are Jewish and whose mother is British, and her enthusiasm for learning how to cook is infectious. Ideal for family listening to share in the joy of making good food, and to discuss the importance of standing up for what is right.

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Support for Behind the Mic comes from Blackstone Publishing, a 30-years plus strong independent audiobook publisher that is now also publishing print books and ebooks. This fall, Blackstone is publishing an array of stellar titles—Cecilia Aragon’s memoir Flying Free, which tells the odds-defying story of how she became the first Latina pilot on the US Aerobatic Team; the historical fiction novel Escaping Dreamland by NY Times bestselling author Charlie Lovett; the YA dystopian thriller The Key to Fear from NY Times bestselling author Kristin Cast, and Don’t Move—a horror novel from Darren Wearmouth and television star James S. Murray. Learn about these and more titles from Blackstone’s Fall 2020 list at BlackstonePublishing.com.