Sheth, Kashmira. Blue Jasmine. Hyperion Books: New York, 2004.

            Kashmira Sheth’s novel, Blue Jasmine, follows the protagonist, Seema, a 12-year-old girl whose family moves from India to Iowa City in America. Although Seema has a very difficult time leaving her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, she looks forward to experiencing everything that America has to offer. However, unlike she anticipated Seema initially has a very difficult time adjusting to American culture where everything seems to be so different from India, especially the language. Much of the novel focuses on Seema’s self-consciousness concerning her inability to speak “American English,” as well as her intense desire to fit in with her classmates. Although she meets a few girls who become her friends, a large portion of the novel deals with her subjugation to a school bully, who ruthlessly teases her about her accent and unfamiliarity with American culture. While this bully, Carrie, is terribly cruel through much of the book, the two eventually become friends, which leads Seema to reconsider how she treated an impoverished girl, Mutka, at her school back in India, so Mutka and Seema establish a friendship via mail. Eventually, Seema grows accustomed to America and begins to consider it her home, even after she travels back to India to see her family.

            Sheth’s novel is undoubtedly teachable for all middle school students, but I would recommend it for sixth graders because of how young Seema is in the book; at one point, she is described as being in fifth grade, but another time she is described as being twelve, so she may appear too young of a protagonist for middle school students to relate to. Since she seems so young, the issues that she faces are not necessarily directed toward middle school-aged people, so they might feel as if the novel is designed for people younger than themselves. Personally, I was highly interested in Seema’s difficulty transitioning into her new life in America, especially in regards to her development of English as a language, but I think that students will relate more to the aspect of the novel that deals with bullying because it is portrayed in such a realistic way. Overall, I felt that the novel was adequate for middle schoolers, but it was not particularly well written, so I would avoid teaching it in a class because it would be difficult to delve deeper than surface level into the text.