Courage

The White Giraffe

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.

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.

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.

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.