LONDON, March 28: Malala Yousufzai is to tell her story in a book due out later this year, the publishers said on Thursday, in a deal reportedly worth around $3 million. The book will be entitled “I Am Malala”.

“I hope the book will reach people around the world, so they realise how difficult it is for some children to get access to education,” the 15-year-old girl from Swat said in a statement.

“I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61m children who can’t get education. 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.”

Malala was shot at point-blank range by a Taliban gunman as her school bus travelled through Swat Valley on October 9 last year, in an attack that drew worldwide condemnation.

The book will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in Commonwealth countries and by Little, Brown elsewhere. It is due to be published in the next six to nine months.—AFP