Pakistani Teen Malala Yousafzai to Author Book
Published at
Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images(LONDON) — The Pakistani teenager who survived an assassination attempt and inspired a worldwide movement for girls’ education will soon become a published author.
Malala Yousafzai, 15, says she wants her book, I Am Malala, to reveal and help children across the world who still struggle to get to school.
“I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61 million children who can’t get education,” she said in a statement released by her British publisher, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. “I want it to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school. It is their basic right.”
Yousafzai was shot by Taliban gunmen in her native Swat, Pakistan, last October. After emergency surgery in Pakistan she was flown to Birmingham, England, for medical treatment and has just begun school.
The book will document the shooting, her survival and her recovery, which have turned her into a global ambassador. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was runner up for Time’s Person of the Year, behind only President Obama.
“Malala is already an inspiration to millions around the world,” said Michael Pietsch, executive vice president and publisher of Little, Brown, which will publish the memoir in the United States. “Reading her story of courage and survival will open minds, enlarge hearts, and eventually allow more girls and boys to receive the education they hunger for.”
Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala’s father and the founder of the Pakistani school she used to attend, told ABC News on Thursday that she was very happy back in class.
She likes her new friends, he said, and intends to finish her General Certificate of Secondary Education, or GSCEs, in Birmingham. By then, she will be 16 and consider attending another school for her Advanced Levels — the equivalent of the last two years in high school in the United States.
I Am Malala will be published in the fall.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio