Paddock’s Pick: Little Bee

 

review by Anita Paddock
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Oh, my God!  I loved this book. I was hooked from the second page, and the only thing that kept me from sailing straight through it was a need for sleep and a need to go to work. I can’t think there will be a single person who won’t love this book. As I said when I worked at Vivian’s Book Store, and I was convincing a customer to buy a certain book: This is a money-back guarantee!

This novel is about a 16-year-old girl from Nigeria. She chooses the name Little Bee in order to hide her true identity from “the men who come.” These men are thugs who have burned down villages and killed all the people living there.

Little Bee escaped, and this is her story. The novel opens as four young girls are released from an immigration detention center outside London. Little Bee has taught herself proper English from reading newspapers, novels, and the book, LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, a book given to every detainee. She wore big clothing and bound her breasts to conceal her beauty from the men of the camp. The only feminine feature about her was her painted toe nails that she kept hidden by heavy socks and steel-toed boots.

Little Bee has a man’s billfold that belonged to a couple she met on a beach in Nigeria.  This billfold, which contains his address, is her ticket, she believes, to safety. What happened on the beach is the heart of the story, and I can’t tell you anything else, only that it involved the other main character in the book, Sarah.

Sarah is a successful magazine publisher. She and her husband live in a beautiful home in Kingston-upon-Thames. Their little boy, Charlie, dresses up in Batman costumes and fights goodies and baddies all day long. Their life is forever changed because of what happened on the beach.

This author who works as a journalist in England is so clever and smart, and I can’t wait to read his first book, “Incendiary.” Some of the dialogue is in dialect, which I don’t often like, but in this case, when the African girls speak, the reader hears the sing-song lilt of their voices. The little boy who wears Batman clothes is based on the author’s son, and he is described perfectly in actions and in temperament of a child allowed to dress, act, and think like Batman.

Read this novel. You’ll be glad you live in these here parts and not in the jungles of Africa.

•••

Or maybe, you might be adventurous and want to see that part of the world like the brave young woman who recommended I read this book.

Betsy Walker, the 25-year-old daughter of my niece, Lynn Walker, and her husband Bill, recently hosted a bead party at her parents’ home in Fort Smith. These beads were made by African women in an effort to obtain a path out of poverty. I bought three bracelets and two necklaces and wondered about the hands who fashioned paper into beads to go around a woman’s neck and wrist.

Last August, Betsy spent 17 days in Uganda working with these women and their children, helping them turn colorful recycled paper into beautiful bead jewelry. These beads, in turn, became income, food, medicine, school fees and hope for a better life.  This organization is called BeadforLife, and their mission is to eradicate poverty through education and entrepreneurism.
www.beadforlife.org

Betsy plans to return to Africa this coming August where she will teach in Rwanda at The Sunshine School.

“The school is all Rwandans, and the classes go from kindergarten to 12th grade,”  Betsy says. “Many of the students are orphans.”

This time Betsy will stay for a year. I asked Betsy what made her want to do such a noble and exciting and dangerous thing.

“It’s not dangerous,” she said. “I’ll be perfectly safe. I’m traveling with a group called Bridge to Rwanda.”

But all I can think about is the movie, “Hotel Rwanda.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Rwanda

Betsy loved adventure books when she was a little girl.

“I especially liked books about geography.” She confesses, also, to being a big fan of The Baby Sitters Club. Betsy teaches kindergarten in Tulsa where she reads daily to her students.

“They really love Skippy Jon Jones, and it’s my favorite too.”

The most recent novel she read was “Little Bee,” and she loved it as much as I do.

I’m reminded of the song, “Teach Your Children Well,” and I congratulate Lynn and Bill Walker for raising such a brave and generous daughter. I’m also proud as punch that she calls me Auntie.