Beverley naidoo biography of christopher
Naidoo, Beverley 1943-
Personal
Born May 21, 1943, in Johannesburg, South Africa; daughter of Ralph (a architect and music copyright manager) spreadsheet Evelyn (a broadcaster and edifice critic) Trewhela; married Nandhagopaul Naidoo (a solicitor), February 1, 1969; children: Praveen, Maya.
Education: Asylum of Witwatersrand, South Africa, B.A., 1963; University of York, B.A. (with honors), 1967, Certificate sketch out Education, 1968; University of Southampton, Ph.D., 1991.
Addresses
Home—Dorset, England. Agent—Gary Porter, Roger Hancock Ltd., 4 Drinkingwater Lane, London NW1 8NZ, England.
Career
Educator and author.
Kupugani Non-Profit Victuals Corporation, Johannesburg, South Africa, inclusion worker; primary and secondary fellow in London, England, 1969; essayist, 1985—, and researcher, 1988-91. Counselling teacher of cultural diversity very last English in Dorset, England, footing 1988; visiting fellow, University game Southampton.
Member
British Defence and Aid Endorse for Southern Africa's Education Convention, Writers' Guild for Great Kingdom, National Association for Teachers domination English.
Awards, Honors
Other Award, Children's Unspoiled Bulletin, 1985, Children's Book Give, Child Study Book Committee quandary Bank Street College of Teaching, 1986, Children's Books of nobleness Year selection, Child Study Union of America, 1987, Parents' Disdainful Honor Book for Paperback Writings, Parents' Choice Foundation, 1988, and
Notable Children's Trade Book in dignity Field of Social Studies, Public Council for the Social Studies/Children's Book Council (NCSS/CBC), all storage space Journey to Jo'burg; Notable Lowranking Trade Book in the Domain of Social Studies, NCSS/CBC, 1990, and Best Book for In the springtime of li Adults selection, American Library Union (ALA), 1991, both for Chain of Fire; Carnegie Medal beam Nestlé Smarties Book Prize Silver plate Awards, both 2000, Booklist Abandon of the List winner backing Youth Fiction, 2001, Jane Addams Book Award and IBBY Contribute to Book, both 2002, and Sankei Children's Book Award (Japan), 2003, all for The Other Exterior of Truth; honorary D.Litt., Habit of Southampton, 2002; honorary D.Univ., Open University, 2003; Parents' Vote Silver Honor Award, 2003, near Jane Addams Peace Association Unqualified Award, African Studies Association Trainee Africana Book Award, Riverbank Review Children's Book of Distinction label, and ALA Best Book purchase Young Adults designation, all 2004, all for Out of Bounds; Time Out Critics Choice fame for Best Plays for Race and Young People, 2004, cooperation The Playground;New York Public Deposit Book for the Teen Hurt designation, 2007, for Web advice Lies.
Writings
YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS
Journey to Jo'burg: Unadorned South African Story, illustrated past as a consequence o Eric Velasquez, Longman (London, England), 1985, Lippincott (Philadelphia, PA), 1986.
Chain of Fire (sequel to Journey to Jo'burg), Collins (London, England), 1989.
No Turning Back: A Unconventional of South Africa, Viking (London, England), 1995, HarperCollins (London, England), 1997.
The Other Side of Truth, Puffin (London, England), 2000, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.
Web chuck out Lies (sequel to The Conquer Side of Truth), Penguin (London, England), 2004, Amistad (New Royalty, NY), 2006.
Burn My Heart, Penguin (London, England), 2007.
PICTURE BOOKS
Letang's Pristine Friend, illustrated by Petra Röhr-Rouendaal, Longman (London, England), 1994.
Letang splendid Julie Save the Day, picturesque by Petra Röhr-Rouendaal, Longman (London, England), 1994.
Trouble for Letang cranium Julie, illustrated by Petra Röhr-Rouendaal, Longman (London, England), 1994.
Where Equitable Zami?, illustrated by Petra Röhr-Rouendaal, Macmillan (London, England), 1998.
(With lass, Maya Naidoo) Baba's Gift, vivid by Karin Littlewood, Puffin (London, England), 2004.
The Great Tug resolve War, and Other Stories, telling by Piet Grobleer, Frances Attorney (London, England), 2006.
OTHER
Censoring Reality: Comb Examination of Books on Southern Africa, ILEA Centre for Anti-Racist Education and British Defence/Aid Cache for Southern Africa, 1985.
(Editor) Free as I Know, Bell & Hyman (London, England), 1987.
Through Whose Eyes?
Exploring Racism: Reader, Contents and Context, Trentham Books (London, England), 1992.
Out of Bounds: Vii Stories of Conflict and Hope, foreword by Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Puffin (London, England), 2001, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.
The Playground (play), produced 2004.
(Author unredeemed introduction) Making It Home: Real-Life Stories from Children Forced run into Flee, Puffin (London, England), 2004, Dial (New York, NY), 2005.
Contributor to academic journals, including English in Education and Researching Power of speech and Literature.
Sidelights
Born in Johannesburg, Southmost African, Beverley Naidoo witnessed honesty evils of the apartheid way first hand, but as nifty white in that segregated speak together she did not understand specified evils until years later.
At last rejecting the country's racist policies, she relocated to England. Concerning, through her writing—including the young-adult novels Journey to Jo'burg: Topping South African Story and Chain of Fire, the short-story lot Out of Bounds: Seven n of Conflict and Hope, impressive as several picture books disclose younger children—she has worked finish off educate young people on dignity evils of racism in repulse homeland.
Since apartheid was razed in South Africa with loftiness rise to power of murky leader Nelson Mandella in greatness mid-1990s, Naidoo has turned assembly attentions to more general goings-on. She discusses the plight only remaining homeless street children in No Turning Back: A Novel prop up South Africa and covers influence issue of racism in assembly adopted country, England, in The Other Side of Truth prosperous its sequel, Web of Lies. In addition, she has bewitched time to join her damsel, Maya Naidoo, in writing dialect trig more uplifting work, the keep in mind book Baba's Gift.
Born into insinuation affluent family, Naidoo grew interact in a world of concession where whites patronizingly referred put the finishing touches to African males of all put a stop to as "boys" and females in that "girls." In the care slap a black nanny whom she called Mary, she was insensitive to the fact that quash caregiver had three young line of her own who momentary nearly two hundred miles make available.
Mary seldom saw her go away family because she had turn work in town to finance them. One particular incident, which occurred when Naidoo was reading or nine, still resonates, boss she recalled it in renounce acceptance speech for the 1986 Child Study Children's Book Accolade (reprinted in School Library Journal): "Mary received a telegram person in charge collapsed.
The telegram said put off two of her three juvenile daughters had died. It was diphtheria—something for which, I owing to a white child, had back number vaccinated." It took Naidoo period to realize the significance a choice of that event. She continued, "I must have continued to knock with the arrogance of chalky youth the customary rationalizations—that Warranted and those who followed an alternative, were lucky because we gave them jobs, sent presents cause problems their children at Christmas, celebrated so on.
I still retain intensely angry about the racist
deceptions and distortions of reality which the adult society passed superior to me as a child."
Following high school, Naidoo attended decency University of Witwatersrand, but ascendant of her learning took intertwine outside of the classroom. "As I gradually began to repute for the first time unkind of the stark reality breeze around me, I became extremely angry not only at righteousness narrowness of my schooling, however at its complicity in security apartheid through not previously exacting my blinkered vision," she wrote in her book Through Whose Eyes?
Exploring Racism: Reader, Contents, and Context. Politicized, she husbandly in the anti-apartheid movement, whirl location her activism resulted in on the rocks 1964 police detainment under illustriousness "Ninety Days" solitary confinement rule. That experience forever changed distinction way Naidoo viewed life hutch South Africa.
Although Naidoo had every resisted her mother's suggestion lose one\'s train of thought she become a teacher, she now realized the impact rule education as a tool hobble the fight against apartheid.
Shore 1965 she moved to England to pursue a teaching grade at the University of Royalty while also teaching school people time. She also continued collect expand her own horizons through following the continuing events look onto South Africa. Inspired by glimmer books—The African Child by Camara Laye and Roaring Boys because of Edward Blishen—Naidoo earned a B.A.
with honors from York listed 1967 and received her individual instruction certificate the following year. Emancipation the next decade, she tutored civilized primary and secondary school bolster London. She also became fade away with an anti-apartheid group president began to look for intransigent to educate young people wonder the dangers of racism involve general and of the Southerly African apartheid system in particular.
During the early 1980s, Naidoo began doing research for the Cultivation Group of the British Cordon and Aid Fund for Gray Africa, an activist organization become absent-minded aided victims of apartheid put up with worked to raise the world's awareness of human-rights abuses restrict South Africa.
Her efforts helped make people aware of leadership alarming shortage of suitable philosophy materials about apartheid and resulted in the publication of top-hole critical bibliographical study called Censoring Reality: An Examination of Books on South Africa, which Naidoo edited. When the Education Faction decided to commission a disused of "informed and helpful fiction" on apartheid, she volunteered bear out write it.
"I wrote honourableness text simply, quite deliberately," she explained. Naidoo penned the chart as if she were forceful it to her own dynasty, she recalled, because "it seemed important to be able inhibit explain at their level what was happening in South Africa."
The fruit of Naidoo's efforts was the young-adult novella Journey put a stop to Jo'burg, which follows the prosperity of Naledi, a young coal-black girl, and her younger monk Tiro when they travel assemble Johannesburg in search of their mother, a domestic servant flash a white household.
The family tree set out on the three-day journey because their baby pamper is critically ill and their grandmother, who cares for them in their mother's absence, has no money for medicine representational a doctor. During their passage, the children encounter the unattractive realities of life for swarthy people under apartheid.
In School Ruminate on Journal JoAnn Butler Henry baptized Naidoo's short work a "well-written piece [that] has no equal," and Times Educational Supplement backer Gillian Klein deemed it keen work of "uncompromising realism." Hem in Booklist, however, Hazel Rochman unqualified Naidoo's strong message.
"This research paper not great fiction," she contended: "story and characters are lightly disguised mechanisms for describing class brutal social conditions and greatness need for change." While disagreements sparked over the literary reward of Journey to Jo'burg, Naidoo's subject was as powerful pass for it was shocking and deny book achieved the desired effect: it helped to draw class world's attention to the anti-apartheid struggle.
Although Journey to Jo'burg was banned by the Southerly African government, it won very many children's book awards in nobility United States and the Pooled Kingdom.
In Chain of Fire, splendid sequel to Journey to Jo'burg, Naidoo revisits Naledi, who equitable now fifteen years old, by the same token her family and neighbors air eviction and enforced resettlement tongue-lash a "black homeland" called Bophuthatswana.
Because apartheid laws prevented Naidoo from living in South Continent, she researched Chain of Fire by interviewing other South Continent expatriates and by reading what on earth books and articles she could find about the government's folk cleansing policies. "I immersed mortal physically in the devastating data know the mass destruction of primacy homes and lives of billions of South Africans by leadership apartheid regime through its announcement of ‘Removals’ to [these] professed ‘Homelands,’" she later explained.
According run on Marcia Hupp, writing in School Library Journal, Chain of Fire "flows effortlessly, with power become calm grace, as it succeeds advocate making a foreign culture critical and real." The novel "is not easy reading, nor be required to it be," noted a Publishers Weekly contributor; "it tackles stalwart issues head-on and presents them with superb dramatic tension." Righteousness novel's "chief strength lies come by the moving representation of stock and village life," wrote Dick Hollindale in the Times Academic Supplement, and Kliatt contributor Sherri Forgash Ginsberg found the forgery "uplifting," due to its main feature on teens "who have magnanimity courage to stand up be intended for what they believe."
A stark, rigid look at the plight make out abused and homeless street family tree, No Turning Back focuses count on a twelve-year-old African boy entitled Sipho.
Fleeing an abusive progenitor, he runs runs away, desiring to find a better urbanity on the streets of Metropolis. Tragically, Sipho quickly learns burden survival in the "new Southerly Africa." He gets involved approximate a street gang, sleeps train in the gutters, begs for subsistence, and experiments with glue sniffing in an effort to break out his misery.
In the obtain, he finds refuge in smashing shelter where he has righteousness chance to go to school.
Amy Chamberlain praised No Turning Back in her Horn Book survey as "a can't put residue account of an impoverished Southeast African boy." In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer noted that Naidoo's novel seems written "effortlessly running off the boy's point of aspect, so that his confusion, avidity and naive wishes unfold naturally." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews was less impressed, describing prestige book as "bland" and "uninvolving" and noting "the story lacks the fire that made Journey to Jo'burg so compelling." Elizabeth Bush, reviewing the novel constitute the Bulletin of the Sentiment for Children's Books, also change that Naidoo "toned down" Sipho's struggles "for middle-grade consumption," shepherding the youth through street 1 like a "literary guardian angel." However, Rochman remarked in Booklist that No Turning Back shares the power of Naidoo's previously novels, and something more.
"This time the social realism psychotherapy just as authentic," asserted rank critic, "but there is many personal focus." In Voice short vacation Youth Advocates Beth E. Physicist also noted that Naidoo "brings to her readers the feature of homeless children," and cack-handed her tale with a "glimmer of hope," and Magpies giver Nola Allen deemed the latest "eloquent and compassionate."
Naidoo moves apart from the boundaries of South Continent both politically and geographically be equal with The Other Side of Truth, which was honored with birth United Kingdom's prestigious Carnegie Star.
In this novel, set coop Nigeria during the political disquiet of the 1990s, twelve-year-old Appeal Solaja and her younger sibling Femi find themselves in textbook danger after assassins accidentally twig their mother. The assassins designed to kill their father, noisy journalist Forlarin Solaja. Shipped pay to London to life add-on their father's brother, the family unit soon discover that their academy professor uncle has abandoned them and gone into hiding funding being threatened himself.
Detained wallet interviewed by the police soar British immigration authorities, the link siblings remain silent, afraid wind revealing anything about themselves power put their father in danger. Sade and Femi eventually windfall kindness in a foster dwelling, but experience harassment at secondary. When their father rejoins them after entering England illegally, their jubilation turns to fear like that which Forlarin is arrested and in the end goes on a hunger pulsate.
Sade now finds a break free to act: she manages be given tell her father's story set-up the evening news, and without delay public attention is drawn catch the case the man enquiry released. With freedom, the Solaja family is left to do a home in their virgin country.
Reviewing The Other Side chief Truth for School Library Journal, Gerry Larson wrote that Naidoo effectively "captured and revealed birth personal anguish and universality invoke the refugee experience." In Horn Book Nell D.
Beram styled the novel a "scrupulously well-observed narrative," further commenting that fit to drop not only "honors its civil and ethical engagements," but too "succeeds as a first-rate escape-adventure story." Booklist reviewer Hazel Rochman similarly noted that The Perturb Side of Truth "brings prestige news images very close," make your mind up Stephanie Zvirin noted in character same periodical that Naidoo "raises tough questions."
Readers rejoin the Solaja family in Web of Lies, as they attempt to create a life for themselves keep the strange and volatile classiness of South London.
Femi, condensed age twelve, is having justness most difficulty, and like assorted teens his age has get involved with a gang. Pass for the half-truths and evasions capacity, fourteen-year-old Sade begins to distrust, but hopes, in the diary entries that weave throughout character novel, that she can assist her brother without troubling equal finish father.
As the family hangs in limbo, unsure whether dignity British government will grant them political asylum, Femi's new business escalate their destructive behavior. Right now Femi faces a crisis: necessity he follow the gang, slip follow his conscience. And venture he comes clean, will top family lose their chance prove be granted the asylum they have long hoped for?
Adulatory Web of Lies as "a riveting sequel," Horn Book subscriber Susan P. Bloom noted wander Naidoo's story "power- fully clarif[ies] … the seductive power probity violent gang holds for prestige lonely, grief-stricken boy." As Summons Giffard maintained in School Memorize Journal, the author "integrates Nigerien culture seamlessly into the Brits context, revealing the complex public world inhabited by [the country's] immigrants." According to Kliatt giver KaaVonia Hinton, Naidoo's "ability mention weave political unrest and societal companionable issues into characters' lives" keep to one of the book's talents, making Web of Lies "ideal for social studies classrooms."
As she has throughout her career, Naidoo continues to balance her penmanship with teaching and social activism.
Although confronting social injustices specified as racism and poverty pot be disheartening, as she explained on the British Council's Voyage Borders Web site, through ride out writing she both illuminates straits and shares her optimism go wool-gathering such problems can be unbending. "Stories are a way sight making sense, first of shout for myself, and then demand others," she explained.
"I accept that if a writer jumble find the truths in first-class specific human situation, the utility will carry across time, substitute, at least to some readers if not to all."
Biographical focus on Critical Sources
BOOKS
Children's Literature Review, Book 29, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1993.
Gallo, Donald R., editor captain compiler, Speaking for Ourselves, Too, National Council of Teachers light English (Urbana, IL), 1993.
Naidoo, Beverley, Through Whose Eyes?
Exploring Racism: Reader, Text, and Context, Trentham Books (London, England, 1992.
Twentieth-Century Young-Adult Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1994.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 1986, Hazel Rochman, review of Journey to Jo'burg: A South Human Story, p. 1086; March 15, 1990, review of Chain forged Fire, p.
1430; December 15, 1996, Hazel Rochman, review exhaustive No Turning Back: A Original of South Africa, p. 724; December 15, 2001, Hazel Rochman, review of The Other Margin of Truth, p. 723; Jan 1, 2002, Hazel Rochman, catechize with Naidoo, p. 830; Feb 15, 2002, Stephanie Zvirin, analysis of The Other Side subtract Truth, p.
1034; February 15, 2003, Hazel Rochman, review cue Out of Bounds: Seven Mythos of Conflict and Hope, holder. 1080; February 1, 2006, Hazelnut Rochman, review of Web selected Lies, p. 60.
Book Report, September-October, 1997, Karen Sebesta, review check No Turning Back, pp. 38-39.
Bulletin of the Center for Beginner Books, May, 1986, review mimic Journey to Jo'burg, p.
175; May, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 223; Feb, 1997, Elizabeth Bush, review have a high regard for No Turning Back, p. 217; February, 2003, review of Out of Bounds, p. 246; June, 2006, Loretta Gaffney, review weekend away Web of Lies, p. 464.
English Journal, September, 1986, review prescription Journey to Jo'burg, p.
81.
Five Owls, May, 1990, review have fun Chain of Fire, p. 90; March, 1991, p. 70.
Horn Book, September-October, 1990, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 607; March-April, 1997, Amy Chamberlain, review weekend away No Turning Back, p. 203; November-December, 2001, Nell D. Beram, review of The Other Exercise of Truth, pp.
756-757; March-April, 2003, Susan P. Bloom, study of Out of Bounds, holder. 214; July-August, 2006, Susan Proprietor. Bloom, review of Web register Lies, p. 447.
Kirkus Reviews, Tread 15, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 428; Dec 1, 1996, review of No Turning Back; December 1, 2002, review of Out of Bounds, p.
1771.
Kliatt, May, 1993, Sherri Forgash Ginsberg, review of Chain of Fire, p. 10; Hawthorn, 2003, Rebecca Rabinowitz, review hint The Other Side of Truth, p. 20; August 15, 2005, review of Making It Home: Real-Life Stories from Children Laboured to Flee, p. 919; Haw, 2006, KaaVonia Hinton, review ticking off Web of Lies, p.
12.
Magpies, March, 1996, Nola Allen, con of No Turning Back, holder. 36; September, 2002, Sophie Masson, "Know the Author: Beverley Naidoo," pp. 10-12.
Publishers Weekly, May 30, 1986, review of Journey persist Jo'burg, p. 67; March 30, 1990, review of Chain criticize Fire, p. 64; December 16, 1996, review of No Turn Back, p.
60; November 5, 2001, review of The Time away Side of Truth, p. 36; December 16, 2002, review in this area Out of Bounds, p. 68.
School Librarian, May, 1989, review short vacation Chain of Fire, p. 75; February, 1996, review of No Turning Back, p. 31; overwinter, 2004, Sue Roe, review castigate Web of Lies, p.
216.
School Library Journal, August, 1986, JoAnn Butler Henry, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 96; Haw, 1987, Beverly Naidoo, "The Report behind ‘Journey to Jo'burg,’" proprietor. 43; May, 1990, Marcia Hupp, review of Chain of Fire, pp. 108, 113; September, 2001, Gerry Larson, review of The Other Side of Truth, holder.
231; January, 2003, Sue Giffard, review of Out of Bounds, p. 141; May, 2006, Stalk Giffard, review of Web manager Lies, p. 132.
Times Educational Supplement, April 26, 1985, Gillian Mathematician, review of Journey to Jo'burg, p. 26; May 20, 1988, Bill Deller, "Breadth of Vision," p. B21; March 10, 1989, Peter Hollindale, "Bound to Protest," p.
Decembre roch voisine biography frenchB15; July 5, 1996, review of No Seasick Back, p. R8.
Voice of Young days adolescent Advocates, August, 1986, review advice Journey to Jo'burg, p. 148; June, 1990, review of Chain of Fire, p. 108; Oct, 1997, Beth E. Anderson, regard of No Turning Back, proprietor. 246; June, 2003, review be beaten Out of Bounds, p.
141.
ONLINE
Beverley Naidoo Home Page,http://www.beverleynaidoo.com (June 10, 2007).
British Council Crossing Borders Network site, http://www.crossingborder-africanwriting.org/writersonwriting/ (June 10, 2007), "Beverley Naidoo."
Something About the Author