A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
	List Price:   $7.99 Unit Price:   $6.39 You Save:   $1.60 (20%) ISBN-10:   0140386351 ISBN-13:   9780140386356 Publisher:   Penguin Group (USA) Inc Category:   Young Adults Pub. Date:   March 1998 Pages:   320 Format:   Paperback Ages:   10 to 14 Grades:   5 to 9
Awards
1996  National Book Awards (USA)  Nominee/Honoree  1997  Newbery Medal (USA)  Nominee/Honoree  1996  Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year (USA)  Winner!  2000  Children's Book Award (Georgia) (USA)  Nominee/Honoree
Subjects
CHILDREN'S FICTION ZIMBABWE_FICTION SUPERNATURAL_FICTION
Description/Notes
While fleeing from Mozambique to Zimbabwe to escape an unwanted marriage, Nhamo, an eleven-year-old Shona girl, struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits. Nhamo?s mother is dead, and her father is gone. She is a virtual slave in her small African village. Before her twelfth birthday, Nhamo learns that she must marry a cruel man with three other wives?and decides desperately to run away. Alone on the river, in a stolen boat, she is swept into the uncharted heart of a great lake. There, she battles drowning, starvation, and wild animals, and comes to know Africa?s mystical, luminous spirits. Nancy Farmer?s masterful storytelling makes this a truly spellbinding novel?and readers will be cheering for Nhamo from beginning to end.?A gripping adventure, equally a survival story and a spiritual voyage.?Nhamo is a stunning creation?while she serves as a fictional ambassador from a foreign culture, she is supremely human. An unforgettable work.? ? Publishers Weekly , starred review Nancy Farmer is the author of the 1995 Newbery Honor Book and best-seller The Ear, the Eye and the Arm, as well as the novels Do You Know Me and The Warm Place. For many years a resident of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, she now lives with her family in Menlo Park, California. After the death of her mother, Nhamo is left a virtual slave in her small African village. Upon learning that before her 12th birthday she must marry a cruel man with three other wives, Nhamo desperately decides to run away.