Sister ¦ Her Own Song
Digital version – browse, print or download
Can't see the preview?
Click here!
How to print the digital edition of Books for Keeps: click on this PDF file link - click on the printer icon in the top right of the screen to print.
BfK Newsletter
Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!
Cover Story
This month we feature the cover of Chris Powling's latest title, Where the Quaggy Bends (see Authorgraph). The book is published in July by HarperCollins (0 00 185417 8, £7.99; 0 00 674087 1, £3.50 pbk) and we are grateful to them for their help in using this illustration.
Her Own Song
Ellen Howard writes about 'issues' with great skill and insight (as she showed in her earlier novel. Gillyflower). Sisters taskes place on a prairie farm, about 100 years ago (actually filling out the spare details of facts from the author's own family). Alena, the eldest of four, has to act as midwife, when the fifth is born prematurely, and then as substitute mother when the baby dies and the mother is lift weak and, ill. Her Own Song also uses the past, the early part of this century, to follow Mellie's intense few days of discovery. She finds her origins in a tangled web, the includes her natural mother selling her to Chinese parents, from which she's forcibly taken by government officials. Having lost her adopted mother, Mellie (Mei-Li) discovers a rich source of family and a new sense of her identity.
The skill of these books is to tell their stories well and reach into dark and difficult areas. Readers can come to understand about these through book which are simply too good to put down.