Beverley Naidoo is a South African author of children's books who lives in the U.K. Her first three novels featured life in South Africa where she lived until her twenties. She has also written a biography of the trade unionist Neil Aggett. The Other Side of Truth, was published by Puffin in 2000, is a story about political corruption and how that affects the lives of the children of an outspoken writer. For that work she won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. Naidoo won the Josette Frank Award twice – in 1986 for Journey to Jo'burg and in 1997 for No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa. Biography Beverley Naidoo was born in South Africa.
She grew up under apartheid laws that gave privilege to white children. Black children were sent to separate, inferior schools and their families were told where they could live, work and travel. Apartheid denied all children the right to grow up together with equality, justice and respect.
As a student, Beverley began to question racism and the idea that white people were superior. At 21 she was arrested for taking part in the resistance movement. In 1965 Beverley came to England. She married another South African exile. Apartheid laws forbade marriage between white and black people and barred them living together with their children in South Africa. As a child Beverley always loved stories but only started writing when her own children were growing up.
Her first book, Journey to Jo'burg, won The Other Award in Britain. It opened a window onto children's struggles under apartheid. In South Africa it was banned until 1991, the year after Nelson Mandela was released from jail. A few years later, when the parents of all South African children had the right to vote for the first time, Nelson Mandela was elected president. Books Journey to Jo'burg, Chain of Fire and Out of Bounds are set in South Africa under apartheid, while No Turning Back concerns the experiences of a boy trying to survive on the streets of Johannesburg in the immediate post-apartheid years. The Other Side of Truth and its sequel, Web of Lies, deal with the experiences of Nigerian political asylum seekers in England.
Her 2007 novel Burn My Heart has an imagined point of reference in the boyhood in Kenya of a second cousin, Neil Aggett, being set in the 1950s during the Mau Mau Uprising. Beverley Naidoo has also written several picture books, featuring children from Botswana and England. In 2004, she wrote the picture book Baba's Gift, set in contemporary South Africa, with her daughter, Maya Naidoo. In The Great Tug of War and Other Stories she retells African folktales, the precursors of the Brer Rabbit tales. Works. Journey to Jo'burg (1985). Chain of Fire (1989) ISBN 0-397-32427-8.
Through whose Eye? Exploring Racism: reader, text and context (1992), nonfiction. No Turning Back (1995). The Other Side of Truth (2000). The Great Tug of War and other stories (2001), retellings. Out of Bounds: Stories of Conflict and Hope (2003).
Web of Lies (2004), sequel to The Other Side of Truth. Making It Home: Real-life Stories from Children Forced to Flee (with Kate Holt).
Burn My Heart (2007). Call of the Deep (2008), retellings. Death of an Idealist (2012) Picture books.
Letang and Julie save the day (1994). Letang's new friend (1994). Trouble for Letang and Julie (1994). Where is Zami? (1998).
King Lion in Love (2004). Baba's Gift (2004), by Beverley and Maya Naidoo. S is for South Africa. Aesop's Fables, a retelling with illustrations by Piet Grobler. Journey to Jo'burg (1985).
Biography You can read my biography (and hear me talking) on the. Our lives are made of many thousands of stories and this short Bookbox biog is just one version! Another version might tell you other stories while the pictures below add a few tales. The photo on the left shows me in 1954, aged 11, attending the first performance of ‘The Three Wishes’. My dad had composed the songs for the Johannesburg Children’s Theatre. Was I actually wearing a Red Riding Hood Hat?!
My parents arranged for the portrait on the right to be taken in March 1965. This was a few days before I left on a boat for England, not knowing when I would see them again or my brother who was in jail.
He and his comrades were waiting to be sentenced for their role in underground resistance to apartheid. Fifty years later, here I am back in South Africa, with my writer friend Maren Bodenstein, exploring a special place from my past. It’s a farm beneath a mountain near Rustenburg which my dad had visited since he was a boy. We lived in Johannesburg and I used to love coming here. A rambling, untidy farm, with patches of wildness, it has lived on in my imagination and in a number of my stories. During the long years when I was not allowed to return to South Africa, there were people whom I missed. One of those was MmaSebate who had looked after our family in the city, separated from her own because of apartheid laws.
I dedicated my first book to her (although in the early editions it was too dangerous to include her proper name). I took this photo in 2007, two years before she passed away, with her great spirit still shining. In England, although I remain a ‘townie’, I have always loved getting out into the countryside. When our children were young, we spent many holidays in Yorkshire. This photo from summer 1981 shows us at the bottom of Gordale Scar after a long ‘trek’ down from Malham Tarn!
I began writing my first draft of about a month later. Whenever I go back to South Africa, I like to spend time with young people. I’ve learned a huge amount from working with Martha Mokgoko, a brilliant educator, who ran an amazing workshop based on soon after it was unbanned in 1991.
None of the participants (from the very poor township ‘Alex’) knew that I was a writer until the end. It was a huge test for the book – and a privilege for me to be present.
In the photo, Martha (in the purple jacket) is listening to different views about how best to respond when your baby sister is desperately sick, you don’t have money for a doctor and your mother works in a far away city. Martha is one of the grandmothers to whom I dedicated in 2010.
We both believe in young people creating their own stories through which they can reflect on and develop their lives. Here we are (quite a bit older!) having fun with some very young children at Ububele African Psychotherapy Training Centre on the edge of Alex. ‘Ububele’ means kindness and the Centre’s work is inspiring. As a child who went to a 1950s convent school where the library was kept locked (True!), these two photos taken at the British Library in London are very special for me. They were taken on the day I received the 2000 Carnegie Medal for. Lauren Child received the Kate Greenaway Award for I will not ever NEVER eat a tomato and, yes, Nigella Lawson presented us with our medals and certificates. The students with whom I’m talking were from St Martin-in-the-Fields High School in south London.
I think my husband Nandha took this photo and I like the way it captures the media in action! You can read about my childhood reading You can find out more about me under,. The biog ends with the Carnegie Medal. For some highlights beyond that date, including travels for research and visits, go to.
For a more formal biography,. Listen here to an in-depth phone on Resonance FM.
Biography Beverley Naidoo Bgc
I live in Buffalo, where we regularly get foot after foot of snow that has to be driven through, trudged through, and shoveled for months of the year. Therefore, the thought of going to the North Pole has never been something that ever appealed to me in the least, unless Santa Claus took me in his reindeer sled. But there are those who not only were interested in being one of the first people who found the North Pole, they were willing to risk months of loneliness and boredom, a monotonous and unappealing diet, and loss of fingers, toes, or even their lives to try to get there. One of these people was the African-American Matthew Henson. Henson, who went on several Arctic expeditions with Robert Peary, was finally honored with a (joint) stamp in 1986. Henson, born in Maryland a year after the end of the Civil War, left home after his parents died and went to seek work in Washington DC.
He did any work he could find, including sailing with a merchant ship and clerking in a store; although his white employers were kind, he faced considerable racism in Washington in reconstruction-era America, and found that he was treated more equally on board ships. It was perhaps for this reason that when Robert Peary came into the shop where Henson was clerking, he accepted Peary’s officer to serve as his valet on an expedition to Nicaragua. When Peary announced four years later, in 1891, that he wanted to be the first to reach the North Pole, Henson—who had previously been to Russian ports in winter on the merchant ship—agreed to go with him. In 1909, after several attempts, Henson, Peary, and four Inuit members of the Arctic team, reached the North Pole and planted the American flag. Henson’s sled was some distance ahead of Peary’s, and it was Henson who placed the flag at the pole.
I will note that there was controversy at the time over whether Peary’s team was first, and controversy later over whether they actually reached the pole or just came close, but whether they did or not is not really germane to what happened to Henson after they returned to the states. Peary became an admiral and received various medals. Henson became a messenger “boy”. Henson was not invited to join the prestigious Explorers Club, not even when Peary was president; and when Peary received medals from various geographic societies around the world, Henson was neither invited to ceremonies nor similarly recognized. Like Britain’s Walter Tull, whose achievements were similarly ignored in official circles a few years later, Henson failed to receive similar treatment to white people because of the color of his skin. The book cover illustration by Paul Johnson seems to indicate racial equality (more or less) in the world of Arctic exploration.
Material written for children about arctic exploration and the North Pole also downplays or ignores Henson’s contributions. White author Mike Salisbury, who worked in the arctic and researched for the BBC, published a book on Arctic Expedition (Victoria House 1989). The book’s cover is promising because it includes one brown-skinned and one white-skinned child “explorer” driving dog sleds while walruses look on. But Mike Salisbury’s text for Arctic Expedition does not even mention that Henson was African-American, and there are no accompanying pictures of him. All the historical explorers that are pictured are white.
The double-page spread on “Early Explorers” does mention Peary and Henson, but while there are illustrations of several other expeditions headed by white explorers, there is no illustration of either Peary or Henson, and the text does not indicate that Henson was African-American. (In fact, the only person of color on the page at all is “an Inuit” who apparently does not have a name.) Given the way that the book’s illustrations otherwise encourage Black and white children to be explorers, the failure to portray Henson is disappointing.
Children need role models, and historical heroes, and Henson is undisputedly both. He learned the Inuit language (Peary did not, at least not to the extent that Henson did) and could drive a dog sled, which Peary also could not do. Peary’s leadership and knowledge was necessary to the success of the trip, but so was Henson’s. At least Salisbury mentions Henson. The DK “Find Out” website , designed for children, says that “Robert Peary announced that he had reached the Pole in 1909, but because his men were not trained navigators, none of them could be sure”. The picture accompanying the text shows an arctic sled, but no photographs of any of the explorers. Again, this is an opportunity missed to highlight the bravery of people like Peary and Henson, whether they reached the pole first or not.
Part of a Golden Legacy: Matthew Henson is one of the heroes of Bertram Fitzgerald’s series. Black writers, on the other hand, just like Black organizations and clubs in Henson’s time, have always celebrated Henson’s contribution to arctic exploration. In 1969, the Golden Legacy comics (which I wrote about in a previous blog) did an entire issue dedicated to Henson. And just this summer, Catherine Johnson, already known for her historical fiction (including Nest of Vipers and Sawbones) and ripped-from-the-historical-headlines narratives ( The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo) published Race to the Frozen North: The Matthew Henson Story with Barrington Stoke. Both these stories, written 50 years apart, emphasize Henson’s bravery as well as the racial prejudice that allowed his achievements to be doubted by his contemporaries and buried by history for many years. Ha, ha, ha, microaggression is so funny!
Now hand over that $100. Both stories repeat an anecdote about a bet between Henson and a white colleague that he would not return from the North Pole with all his fingers and toes intact, and link the anecdote directly to the casual racism of the time. It was common for explorers to lose fingers or toes to frostbite on such journeys, but in both accounts, the white colleague argues that it is impossible for a Black person to survive in cold temperatures. This is the legacy of a racist version of human evolution that suggested people of African descent were acclimatized to hot countries, and therefore were best equipped to work (and be enslaved) on plantations, while white people were more adapted to colder countries, and had therefore learned to use their minds rather than their physical strength. This legacy lives on in children’s biographies even now, where people of African descent are more likely to be found in sports biographies than in scientist biographies, so it is crucial to recognize this prejudice and change the paradigm, particularly in children’s books. I found Johnson’s biography particularly engaging because it is written in the first person. This allows the reader to get a hint of Henson’s personality: determined, curious, and practical.
Johnson’s Henson recognizes and abhors the prejudice he experiences—“I didn’t like it when people called me ‘boy’. I was twenty-one—wasn’t I a man?” (61)—but he does not object out loud (“There was no point”; 61) and is quick to see past casual racism when he feels that a person is otherwise “open and honest” (61). Henson takes jobs even when they don’t seem ideal: “I did not want to be a valet. A valet’s job was to iron and clean clothes. But perhaps if it gave me the chance to travel again it might be worth it” (62).
His eagerness for adventure and his willingness to take on lesser roles and accept some prejudice to participate in exploration in uncharted territory makes the end of Henson’s story particularly poignant in Johnson’s account. While the Golden Legacy comic quickly skims over Henson’s omission from the fame that came to Peary, Johnson shows Henson’s pain at being ignored, not just by medal-giving societies, but by Peary himself after their final expedition. “Admiral Peary had never contacted me after our last trip. That made me very sad but I had to live in the present. I always knew life would be different for me. I was coloured. But I knew that I had done great things” (117).
In this short passage, Johnson manages to highlight historical racism and suggest to readers that belief in oneself and a curious, open mind are the best antidote to the frozen smiles of a prejudiced society. The brilliant and optimistic collection from Stripes includes writing from Diverse Voices? Participants Darren Chetty, Patrice Lawrence and Catherine Johnson. In the foreword to the recently-published anthology of fiction and poetry for young adults, A Change is Gonna Come (Stripes, 2017), philosopher Darren Chetty writes, “We can think of change as the space between who we are and who we want to be—between being and becoming—as individuals and as communities” (7-8). This sentiment entirely encapsulates the motivation behind the Diverse Voices? Symposium I helped to organize with Seven Stories, the UK’s National Centre for the Children’s Book, and Newcastle University, a symposium where Chetty was a participant.
During my year as Leverhulme Visiting Professor (2015-16), I formed a relationship with the people at Seven Stories Archives—archivists, curators, and librarians—that was both personal and professional. They were supportive of (and occasionally amused by my revolutionary passion for) my project to make Black British literature a more “normalized” part of British children’s literature. As I put it in the book that resulted from that year at Seven Stories, “The face of Britain might have changed after World War II, but not necessarily the hearts and minds of white British people.
This is partly because the Blackness of Black Britons was made manifestly obvious and continually depicted as Other; but the whiteness of white British society has remained largely invisible” ( Children’s Publishing and Black Britain 5). Friday’s Diverse Voices?
Symposium, held at Seven Stories, allowed some of the brightest thinkers in writing, publishing, librarianship and academia to come together and think about ways to ensure that real change would finally come to the UK’s children’s literature. Today’s blog highlights some of the thoughts (both from Friday and from their more public commentary) of the main speakers of the day. Verna Wilkins discusses her life in publishing for a multiracial Britain at the Diverse Voices? Symposium.Catherine Johnson encapsulates the idea of Britishness/whiteness in her short story from A Change is Gonna Come, “Astounding Talent! Unequalled Performances!” In this story, the young protagonist is told to, “Fight the world. You are a black man in a white world. A foreigner” (69).
When the main character protests that he was born in Norwich, the man responds, “I doubt if anyone else sees it that way” (70). Although I was familiar with this attitude, that if you are Black, Britishness is out of reach, I knew that Seven Stories did not want to mirror this sentiment in their museum or archives.
Collections director Sarah Lawrance pointed out on Friday that, “We have a longstanding commitment to collecting diverse authors and materials” at Seven Stories, but it has not always been an easy task for them. Part of my remit during my Leverhulme year was to provide some recommendations for expanding the collection, but I was very conscious of the fact that I—like most of the Seven Stories staff—was white and middle-class, and an American to boot: the very picture of privilege. What is the point of a person who has always been privileged enough to raise her voice (in revolution or otherwise) speaking on behalf of those whose voices have been historically sidelined? I did not want to replicate old histories.
I suggested we bring some intellectuals—writers, editors, librarians, publishers, academics, book people—from historically-marginalized groups to Seven Stories to hear from them directly. Sarah agreed—as did so many of the great names that we invited. Discussing Crongton, war, poverty and racism with Alex Wheatle. We called the symposium “Diverse Voices?” because it left open the question of whose voices were heard and where those voices were welcome. It became part of Newcastle’s Freedom City project, a celebration of the 50 th anniversary of Newcastle University’s granting an honorary doctorate to Martin Luther King, Jr. The themes of Freedom City were those that King mentioned in his speech at the ceremony: the effects of war, poverty and racism on society.
King had come to Newcastle from my current hometown of Buffalo, where he argued that these problems affected young people the most because “the best in these minds cannot come out” when they have to worry about their education, their housing, their ability to make their voices count. I was lucky enough to discuss these ideas with author Alex Wheatle, who said that the characters in his Crongton series were affected by all of these issues—from World War II, which brought so many of their parents and grandparents to Britain, to the day-to-day poverty that prevents them from reaching their goals, to the institutional racism that keeps them “in their place”. All of Wheatle’s young adult characters in his Crongton series have creative and artistic dreams, but there remains a question over whether they will be able to achieve them. As he said at the symposium when talking about how whiteness influences prize-giving, “Otherness wasn’t quite adjudicated for.”. Candy Gourlay’s Tall Story is about being “other” for a lot of reasons–not about being white. Otherness, or rather being othered, was something that had affected many of the speakers at the symposium.
Filipino writer Candy Gourlay mentioned that her work had been translated to television with her main characters depicted as white because there was always “the assumption that if I had a hero, my hero would be white”. SF Said wondered if by only listing his initials on his books, he had created the same assumption: “The minute I took away the obvious ‘difference’ of my name, doors opened for me.”. Does a diverse book have to be “about” diversity? Does a diverse author have to appear as “other”? Some of the participants mentioned historical moments when those doors were opened because of cultural change; author Beverley Naidoo talked about how “There were really close connections between anti-apartheid movements and what was going on in the UK” in the 1970s and 1980s. And librarian Jake Hope reminded the audience of the “radical roots” that led librarians (Black and white) to demand changes in publishing during that same time period.
This sense of history was underscored by author Patrice Lawrence, who highlighted the importance of the historical record: “The joy of looking at archives,” she said, is that “you come to understand how we got to where we are.” And archivist and author S. Martin pointed out that archives could teach more than just adults: “Archives are a world that kids can write themselves into.”. Onyefulu’s A is for Africa is one way that she makes a difference–a difference she expects everyone to try to enact. Many of the symposium participants found the pace of historical change too slow, and did not wait for a space to be made for them. Verna Wilkins, the founder of Tamarind and then of Firetree Books, talked about how her life’s work was “an attempt to redress the balance” in the world of publishing. The illustrator Yu Rong spoke about seeing a hole in the publishing world: “There is very little about China and Chinese people in UK children’s books” and so Rong has done her best to fill up that hole, at least a little bit. But for almost everyone at the symposium, action by one group of people was not enough to bring real change for everyone.
Instead, it will take hard work and difficult discussions to change children’s literature in the UK if we are going to make every child feel a sense of belonging in the world of books. We must read differently—think differently—speak differently.
We must cross the barriers that keep us apart by any means necessary. We have to talk, and continue to talk, to each other–even when those conversations are difficult. In Sita Brahmachari’s recent book for the publisher Barrington Stoke, Worry Angels (2017), she writes about the difficulty and necessity of communication: “If someone doesn’t speak the same language as you. When you want them to understand not just the words that you say, but what you feel, then you try to speak in any way that you can. With your hands, with your eyes, with pictures in the sand.
You act things out. You let the feeling show in your whole body.
Whatever way you can to show them you want to be your friend” (71). It is this kind of communication we need to keep up between us all, even when it is hard. When it goes wrong—as it will—we must keep on trying. This is the only way to ensure that the change we want will come in British children’s books—for all kids. YA novelist Alex Wheatle was among the people who experienced the Brixton Riot of 1981. 1981: The Brixton riots erupt as a response to the perceived racist attitudes of police against the Black British community.
West Indian Children in our Schools, a government report authored by Anthony Rampton, calls for mainstream literature to better represent the increasingly diverse cultures of Britain. The Rampton report was written in response to increasing tension between the Black and Asian British communities and law enforcement. 1982: The first of the International Book Fairs of Radical Black and Third World Books is held in Islington Town Hall, London, partly due to lack of outlets for BAME books for children. New Beacon and Bogle L’Ouverture are major sponsors. The cover of one of the IRR’s histories of racism. The fourth book, The Fight Against Racism, shows pictures of the Brixton Riots.
1982: The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) publishes a series of informational books for older readers on racism, starting with The Roots of Racism. The four books touch on issues of colonialism, slavery, white privilege, police brutality, protests and riots. 1983: Valerie Bloom’s first UK collection of poems, Touch Mi! Is published by Bogle L’Ouverture, aimed at a young adult audience. Anita Desai’s Village by the Sea (Heinemann), about an Indian village, wins the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.
1984: Geraldine Kaye’s Comfort Herself, about a young Black Briton who goes to live with her father in Ghana, wins the Other Award. Grace Hallworth’s collection of ghost stories from the Caribbean, Mouth Open, Story Jump Out (Methuen) is published. Dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah was recommended by the Youth Library Group for older readers in the year of the Handsworth riots. 1985: Brixton and Handsworth (in Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city) again face clashes between police and Black British youth. The Youth Libraries Group, in their newly revised list of Multiracial Books for the Classroom, recommend Pen Rhythm, “a lively collection by this well known poet” (100), Benjamin Zephaniah. 1986: 13-year-old Bangladeshi Briton Ahmed Iqbal Ullah is murdered by a classmate on the school playground in Manchester.
Ullah’s murder was racially motivated. Nichols’ poetry collection includes British Asian as well as Black British poets. 1988: Britain introduces a National Curriculum; many complain it does not address the needs of diverse Britain, but instead urges assimilation.
Journey To Jo'burg Beverley Naidoo
Blackie publishes Guyanese-born poet Grace Nichols’ collection from Black and Asian poets around the world, Black Poetry (the title was changed to Poetry Jump-Up in the paperback edition). 1993: 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence is killed by a gang of white British youths while he is waiting for a bus. Lawrence did not know his attackers. The murder was racially motivated. The official inquiry into Lawrence’s death, the Macpherson Report (1999), would call for many changes, including revisions to the National Curriculum to include anti-racist and diverse teaching and reading materials. Meiling Jin, a London-based writer of Guyanese Chinese descent, publishes Thieving Summer (Hamish Hamilton) 1997: Poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his collection for older readers, School’s Out: Poems Not for School (AK). Bali Rai has produced several titles for Barrington Stoke on high interest topics such as football for reluctant readers.
1998: Barrington Stoke, a publisher focused on reluctant and dyslexic children and YA readers, is founded. They publish books for YA readers by many high-impact BAME authors, including Bali Rai, Malorie Blackman, and Sita Brahmachari.
1999: The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust is set up in Manchester to honor the 13-year-old killed by his classmate; the trust would publish stories of young refugees and immigrants to Manchester, as well as illustrated biographies of BAME Britons created by young people. Benjamin Zephaniah’s first novel, Face (Bloomsbury), “a story of facial discrimination,” as he calls it, is published. 2000: Black British publisher Tamarind Press publishes the first in its Black Profiles (later renamed Black Stars) series by Verna Wilkins, biographies of living Black Britons of achievement, including author Malorie Blackman. The Carnegie Medal goes to South African-born white British author Beverley Naidoo for her book about Nigerian refugees, The Other Side of Truth (Puffin). Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses led to a series of successful novels–and to her becoming the first Black British Children’s Laureate. 2001: Black British author Malorie Blackman’s novel, Noughts and Crosses (Doubleday), detailing an imagined England where Black Britons have all the power positions, is published. The book would go on to win a number of book awards.
2003: Black British poet and novelist Benjamin Zephaniah refuses an OBE because of the British Empire’s involvement in slavery. 2004: Guyanese-born poet John Agard publishes Half-Caste (Hodder), a book of poems which encourages readers to “check out” their Black British history. 2009: Publisher Frances Lincoln teams up with Seven Stories, the UK’s National Centre for the Children’s Book, to offer the Diverse Voices Award.
Poet John Agard’s revision of Dante, The Young Inferno (Frances Lincoln), with illustrations by Satoshi Kitamura, appears and is nominated (not shortlisted) for the Carnegie Medal. 2013: Malorie Blackman is appointed the first Black British Children’s Laureate. Pakistani-born Tariq Mehmood becomes the only non-white author to win the Diverse Voices Award, for his novel You’re Not Proper (Hope Road). White British author Nick Lake’s In Darkness (Bloomsbury), about the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, is shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
2014: Seven Stories and Frances Lincoln publish a list of “Diverse Voices: 50 of the Best” books for children and young adults. The BBC and BookTrust collaborate to offer the first BBC Young Writers Award, for short stories by 14-18 year olds. 2015: The Carnegie Medal is awarded to white British author Tanya Landman for her book about post-Civil War African Americans, Buffalo Soldier.
Catherine Johnson’s novel of a poor, Black British woman masquerading as a princess in the early 19 th century in order to survive, The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo, appears from Corgi; it would be shortlisted for the YA Book Prize in 2016. A graphic novel version of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses, adapted by Ian Edginton and illustrated by John Aggs, appears. 2016: White American author Robin Talley wins the first Amnesty CILIP Honour medal for her book about Civil Rights-era America, The Lies We Tell Ourselves. Alex Wheatle’s Crongton Knights (Atom) becomes the first story about Black Britons written by a Black British author to win the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.
Patrice Lawrence’s Orangeboy (Hodder) is shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award; it would win the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and the YA Bookseller’s prize in 2017. 2017: The UK’s Centre for the Children’s Book, Seven Stories in Newcastle, hosts “Diverse Voices?” , a symposium designed to think about ways to better represent BAME voices in children’s books, archives, museums, prizes and publishing on November 24 th. If you are reading this at first publication, you’ll know that this event has not yet happened, but it’s something I’ve been involved with planning over the last year.
Biography Beverley Naidoo Bgc
YA authors Alex Wheatle, Catherine Johnson, and Patrice Lawrence are among the invited guests (several other authors, including picture book and middle grade authors, are also participating), and author and publisher Verna Wilkins will also be discussing publishing for a BAME audience. I’ll be getting ready for the symposium next week, but hope to have a blog or two following the event discussing some of the salient points. Watch this space! This week, (another) row erupted over Oxbridge’s university curriculum, but this one hit the front pages of the Telegraph and Mail in a particularly disturbing way. The Telegraph had a photograph of Lola Olufemi, women’s officer for Cambridge’s student union, with the headline, “Student forces Cambridge to drop white authors”. To be honest, when I first read it, I laughed; the day that a BAME woman “forces” Oxbridge to do anything will be the day that Queen Elizabeth will hand over her crown to Paddington Bear. But these papers (I have a hard time attaching the word “news” to them) do not believe what they are printing either; it is a good headline that fuels the hate and suspicion of “foreigners” trying to “destroy our way of life”.
In fact, the letter signed by Olufemi—and about 100 other students, by the way—did not call for the dropping of white authors, but the inclusion of marginalized authors. A similar “threat” was, according to Sky News, posed by Malorie Blackman when she called for more diversity in children’s books. Sky reported her comments, erroneously, as children’s literature having “too many white faces”.
Blackman faced a volley of racist abuse on Twitter following the Sky report, which is of course ridiculous—since Blackman’s own work often references “canonical” literature, such as that sort-of-famous writer William Shakespeare. The picture book canon in Britain might also be radically revisioned by looking at BAME authors. I am a great advocate for teaching young readers the politics of ABC books, for example. “A” is only for apple in certain parts of the world, as putting Brian Wildsmith’s beautiful ABC book from 1962 next to Valerie Bloom’s Ackee, Breadfruit, Callaloo (Bogle L’Ouverture, 1999) will instantly reveal. That doesn’t make Wildsmith’s apple any less beautiful—but it does allow young people to think more flexibly about what language (and not just letters) are for.
A is for Apple–or Ackee. Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith (apple) and Kim Harley (ackee). One of my favorite books growing up was Judith Kerr’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, and of course this can be discussed with any of the many refugee books that have appeared about characters from Africa or the Middle East in recent years.
A book such as Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy (Bloomsbury, 2001) shares some similarities with Kerr’s book, but has key differences too. Having kids think about the difference between being a refugee family and being a refugee on your own, for example, can help them think about what it means to belong, and what helps a person cope with trauma. Alex Wheatle’s Crongton Knights announces the multiracial heritage of McKay from the opening sentence. The “desert island adventure story” has not really been the same in Britain since William Golding’s dreary, dystopic 1954 Lord of the Flies, a re-imagining of Ballantyne’s 1858 Coral Island (itself a “boys’ version” of Robinson Crusoe).
LOTF is a text that can stimulate discussion about community, leadership, gangs, bullying and violence. So too is Alex Wheatle’s Crongton Knights (Atom, 2016); and Crongton can be seen as an “island” in the midst of London, since most of the main characters never leave its confines. Does Wheatle’s book present an urban dystopia similar to Golding’s dystopian island? Or do the Crongton boys have skills, resources, values and attitudes that help them survive better than Golding’s post-war public school boys? Perhaps she’s looking so grumpy because she’s about to be decolonized. But books do not have to be of the same genre to be compared.
Take Alice in Wonderland—you can’t get more canonical than that—and think about Alice, a girl in a world that makes no sense to her, where the rules seem arbitrary and designed to threaten everyone in general but her in particular. Even if you don’t discuss the commentary on Victorian society that is highlighted through John Tenniel’s illustration, you can still compare Alice’s situation with a character such as Mary Wilcox in The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (Penguin 2015). Both girls face threats to their own existence and both survive through refusing to accept society’s arbitrary rules. Maybe it’s time we stop applying our own arbitrary rules to literature, and start decolonizing our minds.
The “revelations” this past week over Harvey Weinstein’s repeated assaults on women brought up some very troubling conversations about women. Many of the news reports showed Weinstein with various actresses who have accused him of sexual assault; the actresses were often smiling and near enough to Weinstein for him to have his arm around them. But as anyone who has ever been sexually assaulted by someone more powerful than them knows, smiling doesn’t mean you’re happy. It means you are being someone else, trying to survive. An article in the Independent this week suggests that most women, once they hit puberty, have to learn psychological coping skills to deal with the gaze of powerful men—and even then may be labelled as anxious or depressed. The reaction to the hashtag #MeToo (tweeted over half a million times as of Monday, according to CNN, ) shows that sexual assault—for men as well as for women—is all too prevalent in our society, and yet those assaulted feel so alone and so threatened that it is hard to speak up about it. For many of us (yes, #MeToo), it is safer to smile if we want to survive.
It is safer to be someone else. In Errol Lloyd’s Nini at Carnival, Nini gains power through the act of dressing up as an African queen.
This coping mechanism of being someone else has various translations in literature; in children’s books, it is often through the trope of dressing up. Dressing up can simply allow a character to try out a different persona and see if it fits; but it is interesting to look at how BAME characters in books “dress up,” especially female characters. Prior to puberty, dressing up is about becoming powerful. Two very different notions of power can be seen in comparing Errol Lloyd’s Nini at Carnival (Bodley Head, 1978) with Mary Hoffman’s Amazing Grace (Frances Lincoln, 1991). In Lloyd’s book, the titular character is part of a carnival parade, but she doesn’t have a costume. Her “fairy godmother” (really her friend dressed up in a fairy costume) comes along and gives her a piece of cloth in a pattern that could be intended as a Kente cloth (the royal cloth of the Akan people in Africa), wrapping it around her like an African ceremonial dress and saying that Nini is now “pretty enough to be Queen of the Carnival” (n.p.) which Nini, in fact, then becomes.
In Hoffman’s story, on the other hand, Grace likes to dress up as story characters; “she always gave herself the most exciting part” (n.p.) according to Hoffman—which in most cases, happens to be the male part. Lloyd invests power for his Black female character in the historical traditions of African civilizations; Hoffman invests it in male characters, and often those male characters as written by white male “classic” authors such as Kipling, Longfellow, and of course J. Guess which one of these two books has never been out of print since publication? No wonder World Book Day costumes are fraught for BAME Britons. Grace in Mary Hoffman’s book feels powerful when she acts out stories of white and/or male heroes. Illustrations by Caroline Binch.
In YA books, dressing up changes from a focus on power to a focus on survival, particularly for BAME young women. Two different approaches to dressing up can be seen in Tanya Landman’s Passing for White (Barrington Stoke, 2017) and Catherine Johnson’s The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (Corgi, 2015). In both books, the main female protagonist must escape those who have the power to destroy her happiness and security by becoming someone else. Rosa, in Landman’s book, is light enough to “pass for white” because she is the daughter of her slave master. Her master wants to keep Rosa enslaved, and destroy her family life and chances for happiness.
And as Rosa and Benjamin, another slave with whom she falls in love, knows, “White folks can do whatever the hell they pleased. And then they’d say it was your own damned fault” (3). So Rosa dresses up in the most powerful costume she can think of: that of a rich, elderly, white man, with Benjamin as her slave, in order to escape to freedom.
A colleague who teaches slave narratives said that students often argue that passing for white is being a “traitor to your race”—but such attitudes are similar to those who say that women who accept contracts in Hollywood after being assaulted were “trading on sex”. Survival in the face of overwhelmingly powerful enemies sometimes depends on pretending to be like the powerful. For BAME characters in YA novels, “dressing up” was not just fun and games. Johnson’s book addresses sexual assault head-on, also in a historical novel, by opening her book with the main character’s rape. Mary Wilcox, alone and friendless, is raped by two farm boys even though she is dirty, weak, and “looked like a savage” (2).
Mary knew that rape happened to women “acting the coquette and suffering the consequences” (1) but when she is raped that night, she understands that it is not about women “asking for it” but about men exerting power. And while she rejects that kind of power, she still knows that to survive, she would have to be somebody else: “an Amazon warrior woman who could turn on her attackers. Better still, a fighting princess, a beautiful girl with a dagger at her waist and a quiver of magical arrows. They would not dare touch her then” (4).
Mary does not become a warrior, but she does become a princess from an exotic land, the Lady Caraboo, who speaks no English but reflects back “only what your people wanted me to be” (193)—the beautiful, the strange—to a white family who takes her in. In becoming someone else, she survives; but her disguise also allows her “to be something other than who I was; something fresh, something good, something capable of love and being loved” (194).
This heartbreaking statement—that Mary thinks she has to be someone else to be loved—rings true for many women who think that their broken self will never be good enough to be worthy of love. Becoming “what they want you to be” is another way to survive, as in Catherine Johnson’s novel. Cover photo by Bella Kotak. Historical fiction is perhaps the easiest genre in which YA literature can represent the concept of becoming someone else for survival, but I want to end with one last example from fantastic fiction. Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses (Doubleday, 2001) concerns a world where the power positions between Black people and White people are reversed from contemporary society.
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But Blackman’s novel is less about race and more about power; both Crosses (Black people who hold most of the society’s power positions) and Noughts (White people who generally have to serve the Crosses) suffer from unequal power relations, but Noughts suffer far more. Callum, the Nought protagonist, has a sister named Lynette, who was “beaten and left for dead because she was dating a Cross” (124). Her way of coping with her powerlessness is through disguise: she tries to convince those around her that she is a Cross. As a blonde, White girl, her disguise is only self-deception.
When forced to confront her despised whiteness, Lynette commits suicide, knowing she will never be able to cope with “a return to reality” (170). In the nineteenth century, Britain’s G. Henty was advertised as “The Boys’ Historian” because of the novels he published. And while Guy Arnold, who wrote a monograph about Henty entitled Held Fast for England: G. Henty, Imperialist Boys’ Writer (Hamish Hamilton 1980), claims that “Henty was no historian, nor did he ever claim to be one” (88), the fact remains that many British boys in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries had their first grounding in imperial history from Henty’s stories and novels.
The books, which had titles like With Wolfe in Canada, With Clive in India, A Roving Commission or Through the Black Insurrection of Hayti, and The Young Colonists: A Tale of the Zulu and Boer Wars offered British (and other) readers a chance to experience vicariously the conquering and securing of the British Empire throughout the world, with frequent reminders about white British superiority. One of the key reasons for Henty’s success is that, unlike a traditional history book or even many historical novels, his stories used a young white British boy (there were a couple of exceptions, where a girl character was center stage) to focalize the history.
When Henty used a title such as With Wolfe in Canada, he addressed both his main character (in this case, teenaged doctor’s son from Sidmouth, James Walsham) and his potential reader as being with Wolfe; essentially, Henty was urging the reader to go along on the journey. George Washington calls the main character of Henty’s novel “a spirited lad”. Any readers choosing to do so were rewarded by “introductions” to famous figures in history. In With Wolfe, for example, not only does James interact with those involved in the battle over Quebec in Canada, he also meets General George Washington, the future first president of the United States: James resolved, at once, that he would speak to Colonel Washington, and ask him if he could join the Virginian militia. He accordingly went up to him, and touched his hat.
Johnson’s character Ezra McAdam first appeared in Sawbones (2013). Cover image by Royston Knipe.
Additionally, Johnson writes Ezra as a British character who neither likes nor approves of the idea of Empire; in so doing, she reminds us that although Ezra may have been of the minority opinion, he was not alone and surrounded by the flag-waving British imperialists of Henty’s novels. For Ezra, Empire and slavery are inextricably linked throughout the world; in Sawbones he tells the son of a Turkish sultan, “No one man should belong to another. No man should have that power. That is wrong. My life has been thrown into chaos because of your stupid empire” (189). And in Blade and Bone Ezra writes to his friend Loveday Finch that “I think it a sign of Great Advancement for any people to want to Govern themselves without the Intercedence of any Kings or Lords or Suchlike” (7). Ezra is an anti-monarchist, and in favor of the principles of the Revolution (though not, as he later finds, the methods of it); but he is not anti-British.
At the end of the novel, he wants to go home—and home means London. Johnson’s novels, like Henty’s, take the reader through British history by creating a young, highly skilled British character who meets up with famous figures and has a hand in affecting history. But unlike Henty, Johnson takes readers with her through different kinds of histories, and makes room in the past for Black Britons and anti-imperialists. Can’t we all just get along?
Boxers in the Ahlbergs’ Happy Families series.An interesting story appeared in the Daily Express on Sunday about recently-deceased boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s “special relationship” with the UK. In the article, fellow boxer George Foreman is quoted as saying that if Ali “had been born and raised in London, he never would have changed his name” from his birth name of Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.
Ali changed his name in part due to his religious awakening and in part because his birth name was seen by him as a legacy of slavery, one that he didn’t want attached to him. Foreman argues in the article that Ali would not have needed to change his name because he wouldn’t have experienced the same level of racial prejudice as he did in the US. Muhammad Ali at Tulse Hill School in Brixton. Photo from Memoirs of a Black Englishman.This is perhaps a questionable notion (you’ll note that Foreman was not born and raised in London either, and you might find.one or two. Black Britons who would disagree with his statements), but it is true that Ali liked Britain and felt well-treated by the British.
His contact with the British people included school children in Brixton. Ali visited a school in 1974 at the behest of Paul Stephenson, a Black British member of the school’s Board of Governors. Stephenson didn’t like the low expectations that some of the teaching staff had with regard to the Black pupils in the school, and he wanted provide positive Black role models for the students (see Stephenson’s Memoirs of a Black Englishman for more about his efforts) so he asked Ali to come and talk to the students. After that visit, Ali helped Stephenson set up the Muhammad Ali Sports Development Association to develop confidence in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic pupils through sport. Ali’s interaction with British schoolchildren and Foreman’s comments about racial prejudice got me thinking about boxing in/and children’s literature. Two very different books sprung to mind, one for the picture book reader and one for the novel reader. They illustrate quite nicely the aspirational and actual attitudes about race in Britain and in British children’s literature.
The picture book, by white author-illustrator team Janet and Allan Ahlberg, is part of the “Happy Families” series, Mr Biff the Boxer (1980). The novel, written by Black British author Catherine Johnson, is Hero (2001). The boxers give up fighting because they have so much in common (but who’s going to pay for dinner now that they’ve made themselves redundant?)The Ahlbergs’ titular Mr Biff, a white boxer, is meant to face Mr Bop, in a charity fight. The Black Mr Bop, we are told, is “fit as a fiddle.
The toughest man in town. The champion” (n.p.) whereas Mr Biff is lazy and requires his children and his wife to “toughen him up”, which they do by feeding him carrots and banging him on the head. They succeed well enough that the fight between Biff and Bop ends in a draw. The two boxers meet each other in the dressing room and decide that boxing is “silly” because it leaves them feeling sore—so the two families go out to dinner at a restaurant together “And a happy time was had by all” (n.p.). The message of the book is one of, not just happy boxing families, but a happy British family full of racial harmony. Bop is initially seen as a threat who must be fought against, but Biff and Bop soon realize they have more in common than not, and they (literally) break bread together, becoming one big happy family. The Ahlbergs depiction of race here does and does not matter; on the surface it does not matter, but the book would not have the same impact if both fighters were white, for example.
The fact that Puffin, who published the series, thought that the multiracial aspect of the Happy Families series was important is indicated by a letter I found in the Seven Stories archive (look and see what the collection holds here: ), in which the Puffin editor of the time decides not to republish Leila Berg’s multiracial reading books in the Nippers series because Puffin had already committed to Happy Families (the idea that the books were a like-for-like substitute is worthy of an article of its own—but another time). The Ahlbergs’ version of boxing and multiracial Britain is, perhaps, the one that George Foreman saw (or imagined), and certainly the one that many Britons want to believe. Black British author Catherine Johnson shows a very different version of race and boxing in her novel Hero. Boxing is not about just going to work; it’s about survival and freedom.
Set in London in the 18 th century, the story concerns the way that Black people were treated in Britain between the abolition of the slave trade and the abolition of slavery. It’s a perilous time, one in which a man can have his pub commandeered by his dead wife’s relatives because they are white and he is Black. Worse, he’s in danger of being sent back to Barbados and slavery. His daughter, Hero faces prejudice and violence when she tries to rescue him and regain their livelihood. Her father’s boxing saved him from slavery in the first place and made his name in London, but it can’t keep him from being sent back. Hero isn’t expected to fight, because she’s a girl, but she won’t let others define her, and uses her fists to make them take back ugly words.
Boxing can only get you so far if you ignore other kinds of knowledge–a sentiment that Ali would approve.But fists are not enough, and Hero must learn another way of fighting. Her father has been rescued by another group of people who have been fighting with something other than their fists: Black abolitionists who fight with words, in the courts. This move from the physical to the verbal is marked in Hero’s own life as well. At the beginning of the story, she “didn’t want to think about slavery” (6), and disdains her cousin Daniel’s impressive vocabulary; by the end, she realizes that book-learning and the ability to read the law and write a will has saved her father, and she determines to quit fighting and start listening. In the last scene in the novel, she asks her father to tell about his life in Barbados, under slavery. Boxing and a thinking mind are not mutually exclusive in this story; in fact, it takes both to survive.
. Beverley Naidoo This is the story of 12 year-old Sade and her brother Femi who flee to Britain from Nigeria. Their father is a political journalist who refuses to stop criticising the military rulers in Nigeria. Their mother is killed and they are sent to London, with their father promising to follow. Abandoned at Victoria Station by the woman paid to bring them to England as her children, Sade and Femi find themselves alone in a new, often hostile, environment. Seen through the eyes of Sade, the novel explores what it means to be classified as 'illegal' and the difficulties which come with being a refugee. South African author Beverley Naidoo was exiled from her home country when she was a student in 1965, for campaigning against apartheid.
Her first children's novel, JOURNEY TO JO'BURG, was banned in South Africa when it was published in 1985 and only available there after the release of Nelson Mandela from jail in 1991. It was however published in many other countries around the world and widely praised for its eloquent, moving and accessible story. Her later novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF TRUTH, won the Carnegie Medal in 2000 and she has written many other acclaimed books for children. Beverley lives in the UK.
Born in Johannesburg, South African, Beverley Naidoo witnessed the evils of the apartheid system first hand, but as a white in that segregated society she did not understand such evils until years later. Eventually rejecting the country's racist policies, she relocated to England.
There, through her writing—including the young-adult novels Journey to Jo'burg: A South African Story and Chain of Fire, the short-story collection Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope, and as several picture books for younger children—she has worked to educate young people on the evils of racism in her homeland. Since apartheid was dismantled in South Africa with the rise to power of black leader Nelson Mandella in the mid-1990s, Naidoo has turned her attentions to more general concerns. She discusses the plight of homeless street children in No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa and covers the issue of racism in her adopted country, England, in The Other Side of Truth and its sequel, Web of Lies. In addition, she has taken time to join her daughter, Maya Naidoo, in writing a more uplifting work, the picture book Baba's Gift. Born into an affluent family, Naidoo grew up in a world of privilege where whites patronizingly referred to African males of all ages as 'boys' and females as 'girls.'
In the care of a black nanny whom she called Mary, she was oblivious to the fact that her caregiver had three young children of her own who lived nearly two hundred miles away. Mary seldom saw her own family because she had to work in town to support them. One particular incident, which occurred when Naidoo was eight or nine, still resonates, and she recalled it in her acceptance speech for the 1986 Child Study Children's Book Award (reprinted in School Library Journal): 'Mary received a telegram and collapsed. The telegram said that two of her three young daughters had died.
It was diphtheria—something for which, I as a white child, had been vaccinated.' It took Naidoo years to realize the significance of that event. She continued, 'I must have continued to spout with the arrogance of white youth the customary rationalizations—that Mary and those who followed her, were lucky because we gave them jobs, sent presents to their children at Christmas, and so on.
I still feel intensely angry about the racist deceptions and distortions of reality which the adult society passed on to me as a child.' Following high school, Naidoo attended the University of Witwatersrand, but most of her learning took place outside of the classroom. 'As I gradually began to see for the first time some of the stark reality all around me, I became intensely angry not only at the narrowness of my schooling, but at its complicity in perpetuating apartheid through not previously challenging my blinkered vision,' she wrote in her book Through Whose Eyes?
Exploring Racism: Reader, Text, and Context. Politicized, she joined in the anti-apartheid movement, where her activism resulted in a 1964 police detainment under the 'Ninety Days' solitary confinement law.
That experience forever changed the way Naidoo viewed life in South Africa. Although Naidoo had always resisted her mother's suggestion that she become a teacher, she now realized the impact of education as a tool in the fight against apartheid. In 1965 she moved to England to pursue a teaching degree at the University of York while also teaching school part time. She also continued to expand her own horizons by following the continuing events in South Africa. Inspired by two books— The African Child by Camara Laye and Roaring Boys by Edward Blishen—Naidoo earned a B.A.
With honors from York in 1967 and received her teaching certificate the following year. For the next decade, she taught primary and in London. She also became involved with an anti-apartheid group and began to look for ways to educate young people about the dangers of racism in general and of African apartheid system in particular. During the early 1980s, Naidoo began doing research for the Education Group of the British Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, an activist organization that aided victims of apartheid and worked to raise the world's awareness of human-rights abuses in South Africa. Her efforts helped make people aware of the alarming shortage of suitable teaching materials about apartheid and resulted in the publication of a critical bibliographical study called Censoring Reality: An Examination of Books on South Africa, which Naidoo edited. When the Education Group decided to commission a work of 'informed and helpful fiction' on apartheid, she volunteered to write it. 'I wrote the text simply, quite deliberately,' she explained.
Naidoo penned the story as if she were telling it to her own children, she recalled, because 'it seemed important to be able to explain at their level what was happening in South Africa.' The fruit of Naidoo's efforts was the young-adult novella Journey to Jo'burg, which follows the adventures of Naledi, a young black girl, and her younger brother Tiro when they travel to Johannesburg in search of their mother, a domestic servant in a white household. The children set out on the three-day journey because their baby sister is critically ill and their grandmother, who cares for them in their mother's absence, has no money for medicine or a doctor. During their journey, the children encounter the ugly realities of life for black people under apartheid. In School Library Journal JoAnn Butler Henry called Naidoo's short work a 'well-written piece that has no equal,' and Times Educational Supplement contributor Gillian Klein deemed it a work of 'uncompromising realism.' In Booklist, however, Hazel Rochman faulted Naidoo's strong message. 'This is not great fiction,' she contended: 'story and characters are thinly disguised mechanisms for describing the brutal social conditions and the need for change.'
While disagreements sparked over the literary value of Journey to Jo'burg, Naidoo's subject was as powerful as it was shocking and her book achieved the desired effect: it helped to draw the world's attention to the anti-apartheid struggle. Although Journey to Jo'burg was banned by African government, it won several children's book awards in the and the United Kingdom.
In Chain of Fire, a sequel to Journey to Jo'burg, Naidoo revisits Naledi, who is now fifteen years old, as her family and neighbors face eviction and enforced resettlement to a 'black homeland' called Bophuthatswana. Because apartheid laws prevented Naidoo from living in South Africa, she researched Chain of Fire by interviewing other South African expatriates and by reading whatever books and articles she could find about the government's policies.
'I immersed myself in the devastating data on the mass destruction of the homes and lives of millions of South Africans by the apartheid regime through its program of ‘Removals’ to these so-called ‘Homelands,’' she later explained. According to Marcia Hupp, writing in School Library Journal, Chain of Fire 'flows effortlessly, with power and grace, as it succeeds in making a foreign culture immediate and real.' The novel 'is not easy reading, nor should it be,' noted a Publishers Weekly contributor; 'it tackles tough issues head-on and presents them with superb dramatic tension.'
The novel's 'chief strength lies in the moving representation of family and village life,' wrote Peter Hollindale in the Times Educational Supplement, and Kliatt contributor Sherri Forgash Ginsberg found the story 'uplifting,' due to its focus on teens 'who have the courage to stand up for what they believe.' A stark, uncompromising look at the plight of abused and homeless street children, No Turning Back focuses on a twelve-year-old African boy named Sipho. Fleeing an abusive stepfather, he runs runs away, hoping to find a better life on the streets of Johannesburg. Tragically, Sipho quickly learns about survival in the 'new South Africa.' He gets involved with a street gang, sleeps in the gutters, begs for food, and experiments with glue sniffing in an effort to escape his misery.
In the end, he finds refuge in a shelter where he has the chance to go to school. Amy Chamberlain praised No Turning Back in her Horn Book review as 'a can't put down account of an impoverished South African boy.' In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer noted that Naidoo's novel seems written 'effortlessly from the boy's point of view, so that his confusion, eagerness and naive wishes unfold naturally.' A contributor to Kirkus Reviews was less impressed, describing the book as 'bland' and 'uninvolving' and noting 'the story lacks the fire that made Journey to Jo'burg so compelling.' Elizabeth Bush, reviewing the novel for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, also felt that Naidoo 'toned down' Sipho's struggles 'for middle-grade consumption,' shepherding the youth through street danger like a 'literary guardian angel.' However, Rochman remarked in Booklist that No Turning Back shares the power of Naidoo's earlier novels, and something more. 'This time the social realism is just as authentic,' asserted the critic, 'but there is more personal focus.'
In Voice of Youth Advocates Beth E. Anderson also noted that Naidoo 'brings to her readers the reality of homeless children,' and ends her tale with a 'glimmer of hope,' and Magpies contributor Nola Allen deemed the novel 'eloquent and compassionate.' Naidoo moves beyond the boundaries of South Africa both politically and geographically with The Other Side of Truth, which was honored with the United Kingdom's prestigious Carnegie Medal. In this novel, set in Nigeria during the political unrest of the 1990s, twelve-year-old Sade Solaja and her younger brother Femi find themselves in great danger after assassins accidentally shoot their mother. The assassins meant to kill their father, outspoken journalist Forlarin Solaja. Shipped off to London to life with their father's brother, the children soon discover that their university professor uncle has abandoned them and gone into hiding after being threatened himself.
Detained and interviewed by the police and British immigration authorities, the two siblings remain silent, afraid that revealing anything about themselves might put their father in jeopardy. Sade and Femi eventually find kindness in a foster home, but experience harassment at school.
When their father rejoins them after entering England illegally, their jubilation turns to fear when Forlarin is arrested and subsequently goes on a. Sade now finds a way to act: she manages to tell her father's story on the evening news, and once public attention is drawn to the case the man is released. With freedom, the Solaja family is left to make a home in their new country. Reviewing The Other Side of Truth for School Library Journal, Gerry Larson wrote that Naidoo effectively 'captured and revealed the personal anguish and universality of the refugee experience.' In Horn Book Nell D.
Beram dubbed the novel a 'scrupulously well-observed narrative,' further commenting that it not only 'honors its political and ethical engagements,' but also 'succeeds as a first-rate escape-adventure story.' Booklist reviewer Hazel Rochman similarly noted that The Other Side of Truth 'brings the news images very close,' while Stephanie Zvirin noted in the same periodical that Naidoo 'raises tough questions.' Readers rejoin the Solaja family in Web of Lies, as they attempt to make a life for themselves in the strange and volatile culture of South London.
Femi, now age twelve, is having the most difficulty, and like many teens his age has become involved with a gang. As the half-truths and evasions mount, fourteen-year-old Sade begins to suspect, but hopes, in the journal entries that weave throughout the novel, that she can help her brother without troubling her father. As the family hangs in limbo, unsure whether the British government will grant them political asylum, Femi's new friends escalate their destructive behavior. Now Femi faces a crisis: should he follow the gang, or follow his conscience. And if he comes clean, will his family lose their chance to be granted the asylum they have long hoped for? Praising Web of Lies as 'a riveting sequel,' Horn Book contributor Susan P.
Bloom noted that Naidoo's story 'power- fully clarifies the seductive power the violent gang holds for the lonely, grief-stricken boy.' As Sue Giffard maintained in School Library Journal, the author 'integrates Nigerian culture seamlessly into the British context, revealing the complex social world inhabited by the country's immigrants.' According to Kliatt contributor KaaVonia Hinton, Naidoo's 'ability to weave political unrest and social issues into characters' lives' is one of the book's strengths, making Web of Lies 'ideal for social studies classrooms.' As she has throughout her career, Naidoo continues to balance her writing with teaching and social activism. Although confronting social injustices such as racism and poverty can be disheartening, as she explained on the British Council's Crossing Borders Web site, through her writing she both illuminates problems and shares her optimism that such problems can be solved. 'Stories are a way of making sense, first of all for myself, and then for others,' she explained.
'I believe that if a writer can find the truths in a specific human situation, the meaning will carry across time, place, at least to some readers if not to all.' Biographical and Critical Sources BOOKS Children's Literature Review, Volume 29, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1993. Gallo, Donald R., editor and compiler, Speaking for Ourselves, Too, National Council of Teachers of English (Urbana, IL), 1993. Naidoo, Beverley, Through Whose Eyes?
Exploring Racism: Reader, Text, and Context, Trentham Books (London, England, 1992. Twentieth-Century Young-Adult Writers, St.
James Press (Detroit, MI), 1994. Booklist, March 15, 1986, Hazel Rochman, review of Journey to Jo'burg: A South African Story, p.
1086; March 15, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 1430; December 15, 1996, Hazel Rochman, review of No Turning Back: A Novel of South Africa, p. 724; December 15, 2001, Hazel Rochman, review of The Other Side of Truth, p. 723; January 1, 2002, Hazel Rochman, interview with Naidoo, p. 830; February 15, 2002, Stephanie Zvirin, review of The Other Side of Truth, p. 1034; February 15, 2003, Hazel Rochman, review of Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope, p. 1080; February 1, 2006, Hazel Rochman, review of Web of Lies, p.
Book Report, September-October, 1997, Karen Sebesta, review of No Turning Back, pp. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May, 1986, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 175; May, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 223; February, 1997, Elizabeth Bush, review of No Turning Back, p. 217; February, 2003, review of Out of Bounds, p. 246; June, 2006, Loretta Gaffney, review of Web of Lies, p.
English Journal, September, 1986, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. Five Owls, May, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 90; March, 1991, p. Horn Book, September-October, 1990, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 607; March-April, 1997, Amy Chamberlain, review of No Turning Back, p. 203; November-December, 2001, Nell D. Beram, review of The Other Side of Truth, pp.
756-757; March-April, 2003, Susan P. Bloom, review of Out of Bounds, p. 214; July-August, 2006, Susan P. Bloom, review of Web of Lies, p. Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 428; December 1, 1996, review of No Turning Back; December 1, 2002, review of Out of Bounds, p. Kliatt, May, 1993, Sherri Forgash Ginsberg, review of Chain of Fire, p.
10; May, 2003, Rebecca Rabinowitz, review of The Other Side of Truth, p. 20; August 15, 2005, review of Making It Home: Real-Life Stories from Children Forced to Flee, p. 919; May, 2006, KaaVonia Hinton, review of Web of Lies, p. Magpies, March, 1996, Nola Allen, review of No Turning Back, p. 36; September, 2002, Sophie Masson, 'Know the Author: Beverley Naidoo,' pp.
Publishers Weekly, May 30, 1986, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 67; March 30, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p.
64; December 16, 1996, review of No Turning Back, p. 60; November 5, 2001, review of The Other Side of Truth, p.
36; December 16, 2002, review of Out of Bounds, p. School Librarian, May, 1989, review of Chain of Fire, p.
75; February, 1996, review of No Turning Back, p. 31; winter, 2004, Sue Roe, review of Web of Lies, p. School Library Journal, August, 1986, JoAnn Butler Henry, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p.
96; May, 1987, Beverly Naidoo, 'The Story behind ‘Journey to Jo'burg,’' p. 43; May, 1990, Marcia Hupp, review of Chain of Fire, pp. 108, 113; September, 2001, Gerry Larson, review of The Other Side of Truth, p. 231; January, 2003, Sue Giffard, review of Out of Bounds, p. 141; May, 2006, Sue Giffard, review of Web of Lies, p. Times Educational Supplement, April 26, 1985, Gillian Klein, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 26; May 20, 1988, Bill Deller, 'Breadth of Vision,' p.
B21; March 10, 1989, Peter Hollindale, 'Bound to Protest,' p. B15; July 5, 1996, review of No Turning Back, p.
Voice of Youth Advocates, August, 1986, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 148; June, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 108; October, 1997, Beth E. Anderson, review of No Turning Back, p. 246; June, 2003, review of Out of Bounds, p. ONLINE Beverley Naidoo Home Page, (June 10, 2007). British Council Crossing Borders Web site, (June 10, 2007), 'Beverley Naidoo.'
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