L
ife is good for 13-year-old Binti,
who’s a prefect at her private girls’ school and has a starring role on Malawi’s most popular radio show. Her worst Life is Life is good for 13-year-old Binti, who’s a prefect at her private girls’ school and has a starring role on Malawi’s most popular radio show. Her worst problems are a bossy older sister and her daily chores at the Heaven Coffin Shop, her father’s business. But when her father dies of AIDS-related pneumonia, everything changes. Greedy relatives take all her father’s possessions, and Binti and her siblings are separated and sent to live with uncaring relatives who treat them like servants. When they’re wrongfully accused of theft, they run away, Binti seeking refuge with her paternal grandmother, who warmly welcomes her. Ultimately, Binti finds both her siblings and her own way in the world.

Deborah Ellis always tackles difficult issues, so The Heaven Shop, a powerful and passionate novel about AIDS in Africa, should not surprise her readers. But what is exceptional about Ellis’s story is how uncompromising she continues to be. Adults, for the most part, cannot be counted on, and the children of Africa, both AIDS orphans and those infected with HIV, have to find their own way. Even the grandmother lets her children down by dying when they need her most.

The Heaven Shop never gets strident, but it certainly offers readers a clear sense of the helplessness that African children and young adults face in confronting HIV/AIDS. What the novel does best is offer a human face to the child victims. Binti, like Parvana (the heroine of Ellis’s Breadwinner trilogy) before her, is a plucky, high-spirited heroine whom young readers will take to their hearts. An author’s note gives background information, and an excellent author interview gives some insight into Ellis’s perspective on the issues she explores in her fiction. Like Allan Stratton’s novel for older readers, Chanda’s Secrets, this is a groundbreaking novel that should be in classroom libraries.