When Martine’s home in England burns down, killing her parents, she must go to South Africa to live on a wildlife game preserve, called Sawubona, with the grandmother she didn’t know she had. Almost as soon as she arrives, Martine hears stories about a white giraffe living in the preserve. But her grandmother and others working at Sawubona insist that the giraffe is just a myth. Martine is not so sure, until one stormy night when she looks out her window and locks eyes with Jemmy, a young silvery-white giraffe. Why is everyone keeping Jemmy’s existence a secret? Does it have anything to do with the rash of poaching going on at Sawubona? Martine needs all of the courage and smarts she has, not to mention a little African magic, to find out. First-time children’s author Lauren St. John brings us deep into the African world, where myths become reality and a young girl with a healing gift has the power to save her home and her one true friend.
Courage
When The Bough Breaks
Millie’s is a small family — just a mother, a father, a small brother, Hamish, and her. Both her parents had been orphaned (and were introduced in Watts’ novel Flower), but the family they created was tight-knit and loving. When Millie’s mother announces that she is pregnant, it seems life is perfect. They have each other, and, although the Great Depression has brought hard times to their small town, Millie’s father’s services as a blacksmith are still in demand. But when her mother dies, suddenly everything changes. Her father retreats into depression and Millie, only thirteen, finds herself responsible for a newborn baby. When a stranger appears and threatens the remnants of the family even further, Millie musters courage she never dreamed she had to rebuild the home that means so much to her.Irene N. Watts’ memorable story is as complex and as comforting as family life itself.
Brave Bitsy And The Bear
A small toy rabbit and a large woodland bear come to each other’s rescue during the winter
Lucia and the Light
One winter in the Far North the sun disappears and Lucia, accompanied by her milk-white cat, braves the freezing cold and trolls who want to eat her, trying to find the sun and bring it back.
Wind Tamer
Archie learns on his tenth birthday that he is about to inherit the family curse of cowardice unless he fights the powerful hurricane that will take his bravery.
Sosu’s Call
Sosu lives in a small village on a narrow strip of land between the sea and the lagoon. He tries his best to fit in, to be just another boy, but many in the village feel a boy with legs that don’t work is bad luck. His father is told to keep Sosu at home. When a terrible storm threatens the village while everyone is away, Sosu figures out a way to alert help.
Take a closer look at Sosu’s Call as examined in WOW Review.
It Happened At School: Two Tales
In the first of two school stories set in France, a homework assignment involving autographs excites Claudette’s class; in the second, the teacher’s boyfriend becomes a nuisance using the class’s new telephone/fax machine to express his love.
The Giant Devil Dingo
Unlike all the other animals and birds, the dingo was not a man in the beginning, but had always been a dog. This legend of Gaiya the giant devil-dingo tells how the modern day dingo was created.
One Night: A Story from the Desert
Muhamad, a young Tuareg boy, sets out to prove himself by caring for his father’s goats alone overnight in the desert and finds his night enlived by a pregnant goat about to give birth, in a poetic look at the lives of the Tuareg people of the Sahara.
Golden & Grey: An Unremarkable Boy And A Rather Remarkable Ghost
When a downhearted ghost becomes the ‘invisible friend’ of an eleven-year-old boy who is an outcast in his new school, the two help each other find their place in their respective worlds.