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by Katie Quirk
Thirteen-year-old Shida, whose name means "problem" in Swahili, certainly has a lot of problems in her life - her father is dead, her depressed mother is rumored to be a witch, her family bears the weight of a curse, and everyone in her rural Tanzanian village expects her to marry rather than pursue her dream of becoming a healer.
So when the elders of Litongo make a controversial decision to move Shida's people to a nearby village, Shida welcomes the change. Surely the opportunity to go to school and learn from a nurse can only mean good things. Nonetheless, mysterious calamities plague Shida's people after their move. Desperate to stay, Shida must prove to her people that life can be better in their new home.
"Starred Review. A mesmerizing read that expands young readers' worldview even as the pages turn." - Kirkus
This information about A Girl Called Problem was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Katie Quirk fell in love with Tanzania teaching writing on the southern shore of Lake Victoria for two years. She currently lives in Maine and is working on a parenting memoir about raising her son in India.
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