A Girl Named Disaster

by Nancy Farmer

Overview

This Newbery Honor book by award-winning, bestselling author Nancy Farmer is being reissued in paperback!

Eleven-year-old Nhamo lives in a traditional village in Mozambique, where she doesn't quite fit in. When her family tries to force her into marrying a cruel man, she runs away to Zimbabwe, hoping to find the father she's never met. But what should have been a short boat trip across the border turns into a dangerous year-long adventure, and Nhamo must summon her innermost courage to ensure her survival.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545356626
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.63(h) x (d)
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Before becoming a writer, Nancy Farmer lived in Africa, and her work there included monitoring water weeds in Mozambique and helping to control tsetse flies in Zimbabwe. Since then, she has earned a host of prestigious awards for her writing, including three Newbery Honors for THE EAR, THE EYE AND THE ARM; A GIRL NAMED DISASTER; and THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION. She lives in Menlo Park, California, with her husband. Visit her online at www.nancyfarmerwebsite.com.

Hometown:

Menlo Park, California

Date of Birth:

July 9, 1941

Place of Birth:

Phoenix, Arizona

Education:

B.A., Reed College, 1963

Editorial Reviews

* "An unforgettable work." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review* "Rewarding." —KIRKUS, starred review* "This story is humorous and heart wrenching, complex and multilayered. . . . An engrossing and memorable saga." —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review

From the Publisher

Farmer (Runnery Granary, p. 300, etc.) plunges readers deep into South African social and spiritual worlds in this tale of a Shona girl fleeing an arranged marriage.

When the muvuki, the witchfinder, declares that Nhamo must marry an unsavory stranger to propitiate a murder victim's spirit, Nhamo gathers her few possessions and steals away in the village's only boat, intending to float up the Musengezi to Zimbabwe and find the father she's never known. It's a perilous journey that tests every ounce of her strength, will, and ingenuity: She has to find food in seasons fat and lean, cope with loneliness, face threats from everything from (elusive, perhaps metaphysical) leopards to land mines. Gathering discorporate (imaginary? not to her) companions as she goes, Nhamo lives in and off the wild for months, ending up at last, after finding her father's grave and enduring a cold reception from his family, with the congenial scientists at a tsetse fly research station. Although Farmer describes the history and culture of the Shona and other groups in an afterword, she hardly needs to; the cultural backdrop is so skillfully developed in her protagonist's experiences and responses that it will seem as understandable—or, in the case of European and Christian practices, as strange—and immediate to readers as it is to Nhamo. This wonderfully resourceful young woman is surrounded by an equally lively, colorful cast, and by removing many of the borders between human and animal, living and dead, Farmer creates a milieu as vivid and credible as readers' own. As rewarding, and as challenging, as The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm (1994).

Kirkus Reviews