|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by D Ellis
|
by Deborah Ellis
|
by Deborah Ellis
|
by Deborah Ellis
|
by Deborah Ellis
|
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Amazon.ca
For Binti's father, who runs Heaven Shop Coffins in the small African country of Malawi, business is booming. It is not until his death, however, that the 13-year-old girl comes face to face with the horror of the AIDS pandemic. In this touching young-adult novel about one of sub-Saharan Africa's 13 million AIDS orphans, Deborah Ellis once again deftly explores a serious world issue through the eyes of a child. Binti, like Parvana in The Breadwinner and its sequel Parvana's Journey, comes from a relatively wealthy and liberal-minded family, making her a character with whom young Western readers can easily identify. When her grandmother publicly reveals that both her parents died of AIDS, though, Binti's comfortable world quickly collapses. She and her 16-year-old sister, Junie, and 14-year-old brother, Kwasi, are taken out of their private schools and shunted off to unfeeling relatives who refuse to touch or eat with them. Worst of all, Binti has to give up her starring role on a popular radio show--the one thing that made her feel special.
In straightforward and unadorned but deeply moving prose, Ellis describes the hardships and ignominies that Binti and other African orphans experience under the taint of AIDS, including physical neglect, imprisonment, and even rape. Ignorance and prejudice are revealed to be just as venomous as the HIV virus itself. As Binti's grandmother remarks, AIDS is "a lion in our village" and yet "We do not want to say what it is. We think that if we don't say it, it will go away, but it won't go away." Some of Ellis's characters can sound a bit like safe-sex pamphlets and her break-neck pacing results in occasionally skeletal plot development. But this is an important book--one that packs an emotional wallop at the same time as it introduces teens to one of the great injustices of our times. --Lisa Alward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-9–When 13-year-old Binti Phiri's coffin-making father dies, a grandmother she hardly knows says what no one in Malawi likes to admit: the man, like his wife, died of AIDS. Now orphaned, Binti and her siblings are sent to relatives far from home. A Cinderella-like existence with an uncle whose family ostracizes them and steals their money proves so intolerable that her older sister runs away. Binti, too, escapes and makes her way to her grandmother's village. There she discovers her Gogo surrounded by children, cousins and pretend cousins, all dealing with the effects of the epidemic. A local AIDS activist eventually finds Binti's brother, in jail, and her sister, working as a prostitute. Reunited, the young people open their own coffin shop. The author's travel in the area informs her work, but the message, though important, threatens to overwhelm the story. Binti is a well-developed character, but the others and the events of their lives seem to have been introduced in service to plot; they don't come alive the way the Afghans do in Ellis's "Breadwinner" trilogy (Groundwood) or the way the AIDS victims and their relatives do in Alan Stratton's Chanda's Secret (Annick, 2004). Readers with an interest in faraway places won't mind, though; they will cheer as Binti, self-centered and self-important when life is good, learns through adversity and through the model of her grandmother to think and behave more generously. Teachers and librarians looking for fiction about sub-Saharan Africa will find this title a useful addition.–Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?
 |
50% buy the item featured on this page: The Heaven Shop CDN$ 16.75 |
 |
15% buy Parvana's Journey CDN$ 9.95 |
 |
15% buy Iqbal CDN$ 8.99 |
 |
10% buy The Carpet Boy's GiftCDN$ 8.46 |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Most helpful customer reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Children's Books > Baby-3 > Basic Concepts
- Books > Children's Books > Issues > Illness
- Books > Children's Books > Literature
- Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Explore the World > Fiction
- Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Family Life > Orphans & Foster Homes
- Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Social Issues > Death & Dying
- Books > Health, Mind & Body > Personal Health > Teen Health > AIDS & HIV
- Books > Teens > Health, Mind & Body > AIDS & HIV
- Books > Teens > Social Issues
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
