The Red Pencil

This section covers Chapter 113: “New Neighbor,” Chapter 114: “Withering,” Chapter 115: “Sad-Quiet,” Chapter 116: “Fences,” Chapter 117: “Blocked,” Chapter 118: “No Blue Boundaries,” Chapter 119: “Awakened,” Chapter 120: “Drenched,” Chapter 121: “Listening,” Chapter 122: “Freeing Muma,” Chapter 123: “Release,” Chapter 124: “Healing,” Chapter 125: “Could It Be?”, and Chapter 126: “Roar!”.

Amira notices the group’s new neighbor, a small creature that waddles between houses. She has never seen an animal like it on the farm and learns from Old Anwar that it is called a hedgehog.

Amira notices that her once-strong Muma is beginning to “[shrivel], / like a dried-up hibiscus flower” (204). She is beginning to stoop, with nothing to reach for her at Kalma. The novel’s accompanying illustration shows a drooping hibiscus flower. Leila composes a new ditty about Amira’s lost voice, proclaiming that Amira’s “sad-quiet” makes Leila “sad-quiet,” too.

Amira wonders why there are blue lines on her yellow paper, likening them to “ugly wire fences / preventing / [her] pencil / from roaming” (206). The sparrow inside her feels trapped behind these “blue barricades” when she tries to draw.