When Chanda’s
Secrets starts out, Chanda is sitting in a Funeral Home. She is only 16 but
her step-father is off drinking and her mother can’t seem to get herself up off
the floor, so it is up to Chanda to arrange for a funeral for her baby sister.
The funeral home used to be a building supply store but lately in Chanda’s
town there is “more money in death than in construction.”
If you think this
is going to be one of those books where so many bad things keep happening to
one person that it just isn’t believable, then you are right. Sorta. This story
is fiction, so it is not true but it is based on a reality that is very true.
That reality exists in sub-Saharan Africa where in some countries over 20% of
the people have AIDS or are HIV positive. You can read a lot of books about the
statistics about what is happening with this epidemic in Africa but they won’t
tell you the story like this book does.
It seems that people all around
Chanda are dying of AIDS, but no one will talk about it. The cemeteries are
filling up as fast as they are being built, but every time someone dies people
say the death was from TB or pneumonia or Cancer. Because AIDS is too scary to
say out loud and if you have it and you live in Chanda’s town, you could lose
your job or your friends and even your family might toss you out.
This is
Chanda’s reality and she doesn’t know what her baby sister died from or what
her mother keeps getting sick from. And Chanda isn’t sure she wants to find
out, because knowing the truth may be too big of a secret to have to keep.
Booktalk by
Jane Wheeler, Whatcom County Library System
What would
it be like to live in world where going to the hospital or visiting a doctor
was a mark of shame: A sign that you or your family was wicked, evil?
You really
wouldn't want to get sick would you? And if you did, you'd keep it a secret.
Chanda
lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Her family is really poor—ever since her father
went off to work in the South African diamond mines and never came back. Her
mom had remarried three times—once to a man who abused Chanda badly, another
time to a drunken loser.
But Chanda
won't give up. She protects her little sister and brother as best she can, and
she goes to school. A good education could change everything in her life!
And then
they get sick. Really sick.
Chanda
hopes for a brighter future, a better life: But her secrets may kill that
hope—and Chanda, herself.
Read Chanda's
Secret – but don't forget a box of Kleenex.
Booktalk by
Kirsten Edwards, King County Library system
No comments:
Post a Comment