Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham

by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham

My own specialty is women globally and I do a lot of work on women in poor countries. This book focuses on a woman who is very poor. She is in a South Asian country and she picks tealeaves for a living. Her daughter is either too young to go to school or they cannot afford to send her to school, so the daughter often comes along to the plantation. It’s a lovely story, it shows some of the very real poverty that we see in developing countries, but there’s a touch of magic in it, that it’s all going to be OK. So this book really touched my heart. I’ve read it to a number of classes and by the end, the children are clapping – they love the story.