For: Middle school & YAFitzhenry & Whiteside (Canada) 2004
186 pages includes author's note and question/answer interview
Rating: 4
Contemporary Malawi, Africa.
Told from 13 year old Binti's point of view, we meet her, her 14 year old brother, Kwasi, and her 16 year old bossy sister, Junie. They live happily in Blantyre, the largest city in Malawi, with their father, who has a coffin-making business run from their modest home. It's called The Heaven Shop. The do well enough to be sent to private school to get a good educations, and Binti is an actress/reader in a radio program that everyone in the country hears in weekly serial form.
HIV and AIDS are everywhere, killing indiscriminately, and about a third of the way through the book, the father weakens and dies. His brothers and sisters take all the family belongings, sell the house and business, and separate the siblings, making them work like servants. Binti has been spoiled, but she becomes stronger and more sure of herself as she takes off to find the grandmother that she barely knows.
The story is one of hope, of course. There is much discussion about AIDS, its stigma, condoms, prostitution, and monthly menstrual cycles, which makes the book still a little too old for my fourth graders. But I'd love to see kids of a bit older persuasion read this - good information, and a clearcut look into the lives of people in subSaharan Africa.
Deborah Ellis wrote Breadwinner, one of my all-time favorite books, about a young girl dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. A Canadian writer with quite a few awards - well deserved awards -- Deborah Ellis is an author I am always pleased to read. This wa a good one.
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