Extra Credit

Clements uses Sadeed and Abby’s burgeoning relationship to show how the pen pal relationship enables them to be open with each other about their thoughts and feelings, and gives them a new perspective and vocabulary to understand their inner lives. Although their interactions are limited to written letters, the two children share intimate and creative sides of themselves, through personal memories, photos, drawings, questions, poems, and even small gifts. These reciprocal gifts and gestures help them develop a meaningful connection and supports the book’s message of innate human equality and value equivalence, as it shows that the children’s different experiences and communication styles are equally meaningful.

Clements builds the intimacy between the two children to show how trust and connection are fostered as they make themselves emotionally vulnerable to each other and are responded to in kind. The point where Sadeed’s honesty and trust becomes established is when Sadeed tells Abby the truth, revealing his identity to Abby, as he wants her to know that it is him, and not Amira, who is writing most of the letters. He writes: “I am helping her. […] And the letters are even more from me than from my sister” (112). This shows that he is now willing to admit to his interest in his connection to Abby and his part in creating it.

Abby values this secret, and responds with a secret letter of her own. While she presents a bland, impersonal letter on her project board, she sends a different one to Afghanistan, in which she shares more personal thoughts and details with Amira and Sadeed. In creating two letters, Clements highlights how intimate and private the connection between the two pen pals has become and shows how this is possible precisely because of the differences between them. Its value to them has far outstripped its initial purpose as a scholastic exercise.

In his letters Sadeed includes drawings of his village, region and family to provide Abby with a real glimpse into his life: “At last, there was a sketch of the mountains, jagged peaks covered with snow, rising up and up” (81). This quotation expresses Abby’s wonder and delight at the pictures Sadeed has shared with her. He also writes a poem for Abby, sharing his love of kite flying and nature. This kite represents his desire to see beyond the confines of his village: “On a kite I have painted two eyes. When the kite flies I see beyond the mountains” (77). In sharing this with Abby, he reveals his most private imaginative escapes. Abby reciprocates Sadeed’s gestures with her own photos and poems. She appreciates Sadeed’s gestures of friendship, which make her feel more connected to him. She loves his portrait of his family, and being able to connect his writing to his drawing and can’t “help smiling a little” (119) when she sees his self-portrait.

Sadeed also initiates a gift exchange by sending Abby a small rock from the local mountain range, which Abby appreciates because she loves mountains. She treasures his gift of a small rock, storing it in a bag for “safekeeping” (119) which shows that, although it is a normal piece of rock, for her it has deeply emotional associations. She reciprocates with a gift of some Illinois soil. Sadeed loves that she has mimicked his gesture, and cherishes her special gift: “It was a tiny piece of America, a secret message, sent to him by a friend” (152). Clements uses the “message” as a metaphor for the soil in Sadeed’s inner monologue, showing how the initial letter-writing has grown into a far broader form of exchange.

Clements’s gradual building of Sadeed and Abby’s exchanges shows how they build trust and affection by sharing more about themselves. This is key to his book’s essential message of shared humanity and that people’s inner value is equal despite outward differences. The rise of this emotional arc makes the ending more poignant after the correspondence is ended but also reinforces the lasting value of their mutual respect and understanding.