The 15-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by the Taliban has signed a book deal worth around $3 million.

Malala Yousafzai says the book will tell her story, but also that of the millions of children who cannot get an education in her home country.

She says she wants the publication to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school.

The book, entitled I Am Malala, will give an account of the day that changed her life in October last year.

Malala was shot at point-blank range by a Taliban gunman as her school bus travelled through north-west Pakistan's Swat Valley, in an attack that drew worldwide condemnation.

She was flown to Britain for surgery on her head injuries and, having recovered sufficiently, returned to school in the city of Birmingham earlier this month.

Malala has become a global symbol of the campaign for the right to an education and has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

She first rose to prominence aged 11 with a blog for the BBC's Urdu-language service charting her life under the Taliban.

Her book is due to be published in the next six to nine months but publishers have already released a small excerpt.

"We'd finished for the day and I was squashed between my friends and teachers on the benches of the open-back truck we use as a school bus," Malala writes.

"There were no windows, just thick plastic sheeting that flapped at the sides and was too yellowed and dusty to see out of, and a postage stamp of open sky at the back through which I caught a glimpse of a kite wheeling up and down.

"It was pink, my favourite colour."

ABC/AFP