Ticket to India

Gr 4–7—After her grandfather's death, sixth-grader Maya travels with her mother and older sister from San Francisco to Karachi to help wind up her grandmother's affairs in Pakistan. Before leaving for the States, Maya's grandmother Alia hopes to embark on a secret trip to India in order to retrieve valuable heirlooms left behind decades earlier, when her family fled the country during Partition. Maya and her sister discover their grandmother's plans and blackmail her into bringing them along. In New Delhi, their mission is waylaid when Alia is hospitalized for a serious illness; determined to see their grandmother's dream to its end, the girls continue on their own. Senzai uses Maya's journal to fill readers in on the complex backstory of India and Pakistan's fraught relationship, but the entries are overly didactic, lacking true reflection and an authentic tween voice. Confusingly, Maya is able to relate obscure facts about India's railway system but cannot recall the name of the iconic Taj Mahal. An unlikely subplot involving street urchins and kidnapping verges on cliché, ultimately downplaying the novel's emotional depth.