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Life's not easy for Sami Sabiri since his dad stuck him in a private school where he is the only Muslim kid. But it's about to get a lot worse. When Sami catches his father in a lie, he gets suspicious...He's not the only one. In a whirlwind, the FBI descends on his home, and Sami's family becomes the center of an international terrorist investigation. Now Sami must fight to keep his world from unraveling. An explosive thriller ripped from today's headlines, Borderline is the story of a funny, gutsy Muslim-American teen determined to save his father, his family and his life.
Discussion questions:
- For such a smart boy, Sami seemed to make some pretty poor decisions that could have impacted how things turned out. If you were Sami's friend, what do you think you might have said when he proposed the trip to Toronto? Did he just get lucky?
- This book started out as a story about race relations , bulling, life in North America post 9/11. What other themes in this book struck you as being relevant?
If I'm correct then this was after sami's dad was arrested right?
ReplyDeleteIf I was sami's friend, I would have thought that this was a mistake but he did it for his dad. He found out that his dad was not a terrerist and was the one along with his his friends that was able to free him.
Sinserly, Brooke G.
Yes Sami did make some poor decisions but if you think about it, its not often when you make a bad decision that you know its going to turn out terrible, well depending on the cases anyways.
ReplyDeleteif i were his friend i would have wanted to know everything before i would have given him a ride because i would have wanted to be clear about evertything, but in this case he was either extremely lucky or his friends were just putting a great amount of trust on him as well as faith that he wasn't doing anything terribly stupid with that whole random trip to Toronto. i mean he was doing it for his father, proving how much he loved him and wanted to help him in this time of "'crisis'.
Those themes were brought up very well and what struck me the most was how often people get blamed for something they obviously didn't do, and many of the times its just to get revenge, money or just the general fact that they are from a different culture or race. and i think that no one should put of with that and do exactly what Sami did, he was motivated to prove these people wrong and put their reputation in the place that it belonged, equal to the reputaion of everyone elses. he made poor decisions but in the end he did it to help his family and to teach a lesson to the people around him, just because he is of a different culture doesn't mean that his rights can be violated like that.
If I were Sami's friend I would definitely want to know the whole story about why he wanted to go to Toronto. He mentions something about saving his father when he approaches his friends. Since his father has just been arrested, I might be a tad cautious about getting involved in a situation concerning his father and possible terrorist accusations. I believe Sami just got lucky. There are many things that could have gone wrong, but didn't. Alas, that is what happens when we immerse ourselves in the fictitious world of novels. Things somehow usually just "work out"
ReplyDeleteI liked most of the book up till near the end i didnt like how the supposed 'bad guy' turned out to be the kids half brother. If I was Samis friend than when he proposed to go to toronto than i would have tried my very best to get him to get someone more responsible to do what he was proposing or just not to go through with it because it was possibly dangerous, It was pure luck that the guy wasn't really a terrroist so he was just lucky that it turned out really good for his family in the long run. The most relevant themes that stuck out to me were the obvious ones like race relations,bulling and life post 9/11 but also of courage and high levels of loyalty(To his dad/family) all in all i really liked this book.
ReplyDeleteIf i was his friend i wouldn't have gone along with his plane to go to Toronto after knowing everything else. His friends must have a lot of faith in him to have gone through with it.
ReplyDeleteI would have suggested to him to let a more responsible person to be in on the plane as well that way they still had someone to turn to when things got really tough.
If I had been Sami's friend when he proposed the trip to Toronto, I would have turned him down. Going to Toronto to track down a potential terrorist was an incredibly risky and dangerous idea. Had the people he found in Toronto actually turned out to be a terrorist operation, Sami could have been tortured, kidnapped, or even killed. Sami was incredibly fortunate that the "terrorist" turned out to be his half brother and not a dangerous criminal. However, even though what he did was reckless, it is possible that the information that he found that proved his father innocent would not have been obtained if he had not tracked it down himself.
ReplyDelete