Girl of the Southern Sea by Michelle Kadarusman - ADVISABLE

Girl of the Southern Sea by Michelle Kadarusman, 218 pages. Pajama Press, 2019.  $18.

Language: G (0 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: G; Violence: PG (mob threatens to burn her)

BUYING ADVISORY: EL, MS - ADVISABLE

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

At 14 Nia has had to leave school because her single father can’t afford to pay for both her school fees for high school.  He usually drinks away their money anyways.  Her father disappears for longer and longer, leaving Nia to run his banana fritter cart in the market of Jakarta, Indonesia. When a rumor starts that Nia is lucky, things start to look up, but rumor can change on a whim.  If Nia is to have a future, she is going to have to carve it out for herself.

I love having a larger selection of books to show our students the lives of children in disparate parts of the world. It makes me sad that most of them about children who are barely surviving, but that’s a much more accurate look at other children’s lives and can help them build a larger world view.

If you want to see more books with similar themes and international world views, check out m Pinterest board PACK YOUR BAGS. Or you can click on the Pack Your Bags labels on the right hand column of this blog and on Kiss the Book Junior.

Cindy, Library Teacher, MLS