A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
1 Rating(s)
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
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A Girl Named Disaster

Author: Nancy Farmer

Narrator: Lisette Lecat

Unabridged: 12 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 12/04/2015

Synopsis

Eleven-year-old Nhamo is running for her life. When the village witch finder decrees that she must marry a cruel stranger to propitiate an evil spirit, her only recourse is to steal a fishing boat and go looking for a father she has never met. Alone on the Musengezi River, Nhamo has meager resources to help her survive loneliness, hunger, wild animals, and even land mines. During the grueling months in her leaking boat and on a deserted island, she has only visions of her dead mother and other spirit ancestors to sustain her. They transform her solitary journey into a luminous spiritual odyssey, one from which she will need to draw strength when she reaches her destination. Listeners who have enjoyed another of her Newbery Honor books, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, know the broad range of imagination and talent this award-winning author brings to her work. Young listeners will gain a healthy respect for the richness of cultural diversity even as they're realizing the universality of the human experience.

About Nancy Farmer

Nancy Farmer has written three Newbery Honor books: The Ear, the Eye and the Arm; A Girl Named Disaster; and The House of the Scorpion, which also won the National Book Award and the Printz Honor. Other books include The Lord of Opium, The Sea of Trolls, The Land of the Silver Apples, The Islands of the Blessed, Do You Know Me, The Warm Place, and three picture books for young children. She grew up on the Arizona-Mexico border and now lives with her family in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Catherine on November 08, 2020

You know how Hatchet is about a boy who has to survive in the wilds of Canada? A Girl Named Disaster is kind of like that, except instead of a 13-year-old boy from NYC, it's about an approximately 13-year-old girl from Mozambique. While Brian is angsty because his parents are divorced and he has to......more

Goodreads review by Tricia on February 18, 2009

Excellent book!!! I highly recommend this one. I think it's a great way to understand a little better the complexities of African beliefs and tribal life. It's not a "religion" to them, it's a way of life (believing everything has a spirit, for example).......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on June 11, 2007

i personally hated this book. although i read it with a class i truely hated it. i think even if i read it by myself i still would not have liked it. its not that the writing is bad its just that it goes on forever and you just get tired of it.......more

Goodreads review by Josiah on July 20, 2009

"I am she who lifts mountains When she goes to hunt Who wears a mamba for a headband And a lion for a belt Beware! I swallow elephants whole And pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns Let them hear my words! Nhamo is coming And her hunger is great." —Nhamo, "A Girl Named Disaster", P. 101 "(P)eople ar......more

Goodreads review by Jan on June 04, 2009

A girl's book -- boys likely would not relate to the very female nature of this book. Nhamo (whose name means Disaster) lives in the African country of Mozambique in the early 1980s. The native religion and customs of the time will be strange to a youth reader today. Because the spirits tell her fam......more

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