In post-apartheid South Africa, a Zulu boy keeps secrets from his family as he cares for an injured dog and befriends the daughter of a white farmer.

An honest and compassionate look at post-apartheid South Africa Vusi, an eleven-year-old Zulu boy growing up in poverty in rural South Africa, is enchanted by the helpless puppy he finds in the bush. He names it Gillette for its razor-sharp teeth and hides it from his mother, who disapproves of bush dogs as pets. His devotion to Gillette only grows stronger after the puppy is mauled by a leopard and loses a leg. But as boy and dog play carefree games, storm clouds are gathering over Vusi's family - ruthless rival taxi owners are trying to drive his father out of business. While Vusi and Gillette learn to hunt together, they meet the daughter of a neighboring white farmer. Gillette becomes the catalyst for their unlikely friendship, which has a decisive impact on the fate of Vusi's whole family - and the larger community. A starkly realistic story set against the backdrop of the country's tortured racial history, Zulu Dog holds out the hope that a new generation of South Africans can create a better future for their land. Zulu Dog is a 2003 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

The role of the dog in human society is the connecting thread that binds the essays in "Canis Africanis," each revealing a different part of the complex social history of southern Africa. The essays range widely from concerns over disease, bestiality, and social degradation through gambling on dogs to anxieties over social status reflected through breed classifications, and social rebellion through resisting the dog tax imposed by colonial authorities. With its focus on dogs in human history, this project is part of what has been termed the 'animal turn' in the social sciences, which investigates the spaces which animals inhabit in human society and the way in which animal and human lives interconnect, demonstrating how different human groups construct a range of identities for themselves (and for others) in terms of animals. So instead of conceiving of animals as merely constituents of ecological or agricultural systems, they can be comprehended through their role in human cultures.

This is the first full-length study of South African English youth literature to cover the entire period of its publication, from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Jenkins' book focuses on what made the subsequent literature essentially South African and what aspects of the country and its society authors concentrated on. What gives this book particular strength is its coverage of literature up to the 1960s, which has until now received almost no scholarly attention. Not only is this earlier literature a rewarding subject for study in itself, but it also throws light on subsequent literary developments. Another exceptional feature is that the book follows the author’s previous work in placing children’s literature in the context of adult South African literature and South African cultural history (e.g. cinema). He also makes enlightening comparisons with American, Canadian and Australian children’s literature.

A delicately woven coming-of-age tale, this moving story follows Isaak and Liesa as they grow up and fall in love in their small Griqua fishing village on the Tsitsikamma coast. As Isaak and Liesa struggle with important life decisions, the village goes through its own growing pains and fights for survival.

Under the floorboards of a ruined homestead near Joshua Hills, desert rattlesnakes guard a decades-old family rivalry and a long-hidden treasure that should have remained in the past. In the ruins, Cassidy Michaels, a tracker for Joshua Hills Search and Rescue, uncovers a map hidden for almost a century that leads her ever-deeper into danger of the deadly variety. Cassidy puts herself at risk in order to protect an elusive cat burglar and fellow treasure hunter determined to find Ronald Kingsley’s famous jewelry, long-lost in one of the homesteads. Her life is complicated by Misty Montague, a rival from Cassidy’s high school days, who will stop at nothing to lure away Cassidy’s husband.

Issues for Nov. 1957- include section: Accessions. Aanwinste, Sept. 1957-