Set in Bangladesh, this touching picture book tells the story of a family who abandon their rural home after a cyclone destroys their house and move to the capital, Dhaka, in search of a better life. To survive, Yasmin and her young sister have to take work using hammers to smash old clay bricks to make construction materials, their father becomes a rickshaw driver and their mother cleans and cooks for a rich family. On her journey to and from work, Yasmin notices how the city is full of words: there are signs, billboards, newspapers and books everywhere. She conceives a secret plan to learn to read and dreams that one day she might go to school. Fired by this aspiration, she works even harder to earn a little more money and saves every extra coin until she is able to buy a book. Moved by this evidence of her thirst for education, her parents decide to take on additional jobs in order to be able to send the two girls to school.