Ivy Hove Knihy

During his life with the Mabvira family as a watch dog. Shungu delivered exceptional feats of heroism still remembered by his human family, friends and relations to this day long after his death in 1997. Without entirely approximating human attributes to a valued pet, the author lets Shungu himself tell the world his life story from a dog's perspective. As the story unfolds between incidents, most of which actually happened, the use of the first person style in this story achieves a captivating focus as it highlights Shungu's animal characteristics. The magic of the style also succeeds in rendering drama and urgency to the dynamics between Shungu and the dark world of scheming robbers, house-breakers and muggers from outside - a huge challenge!

Emily is a vivacious, highly spirited, rural girl. She is determined to confront head-on the societal traditions and practices she regarded as suffocating and senseless. These traditional biases are mainly against women and, in most part, impacted particularly negatively to the freedom and development of the girl- child. Of course, she cannot escape this aspect of her community and it saddens her immensely. Little does she know she is, in some strange way strengthening her resources for challenges soon to come! By her early teens, in the mid-50s, she is convinced that education and training is the one sure way to free herself from the resented gender barriers, at least some of them, and achieve some independence. Through a sustained hard slog- juggling between her school work and household chores to the best of her ability- she scales the first hurdle. She qualifies for a vacancy at a desired boarding school to complete her upper primary education needed to proceed to high school. But a few weeks into the first school term, she is convinced that things would not work out quite as smoothly and happily as she had anticipated. Well, at least during the first three months of the school year!