Bound To Stay Bound

Bulletin for the Center... - 09/01/2001 Sade’s mother is the first casualty of the truth in this event-filled novel. Her shooting death—political vengeance for her husband’s journalistic integrity—precipitates twelve-year-old Sade’s and her younger brother’s departure on a hastily arranged flight from Lagos to London, where, reeling from shock and deserted by their paid escort, they are scooped up by the British child welfare system “like two parcels with no address.” This thought-provoking novel offers readers a gripping, open-eyed exploration of what happens when principles meet practical reality in hand-to-hand combat. Naidoo skillfully takes readers through unfamiliar territory (Nigerian politics, immigration bureaucracy) and also meets them on common ground (school), laying out the basic similarity between political and schoolyard bullying. When Sade’s father tells her “We have to stand up to bullies . . . otherwise they get inside your head,” she believes him, but she has also learned that telling the truth can be lethal, and she wonders, “What could you do when you were up against people who told powerful lies?” Seamlessly integrated information and even more telling details introduce readers to the ethical complexities of global politics and well-intentioned but rule-bound bureaucracies while giving equal attention to family dynamics and individual psychologies. A brief endnote and glossary sort fiction from fact and define Nigerian terms (most clear in their original context). Winner of the 2000 Smarties silver medal in Great Britain, this story about the power of the stories we tell—and don’t tell—deserves an international readership. - Copyright 2001 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 09/01/2001 *Starred Review* Like Naidoo’s best-selling Journey to Jo’burg (1986), this story humanizes contemporary politics through the eyes of a child. On the first page Sade Solaja, 12, sees her mother shot dead outside their home in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1995. The soldiers really wanted to kill Sade’s papa, an outspoken journalist. The next day Sade and her younger brother, Femi, 10, must board a plane and flee with false papers and false names to London. The arrangements in England fall through, and the children find themselves alone on the cold streets of the huge unknown city. Eventually, the welfare office finds them a kind foster home, but always there’s the chance that Papa will be assassinated before he can join them in England. Meanwhile, Sade must go to school and live with her grief and fear. Part survival adventure, part docudrama, the narrative stays true to Sade’s viewpoint, whether she’s remembering what she left behind, trying to care for her nearly silent brother, or coping with the bullies at her new school (“Don’t need to spell in the bush,” they jeer at her, though her English is better than theirs). The school cruelty is almost unbearable to read; so is the heartbreaking reunion with Papa in a London prison (“in a great arc, his arms swept up the children”). And there’s no simple upbeat resolution: Papa is right (“bad men succeed when the rest of us look away”), and yet, because Papa wrote the truth, Mama is dead. Winner of the British Carnegie Medal, this powerful novel brings the news images very close by showing how anyone can become part of those winding lines of refugees. - Copyright 2001 Booklist.