about the book
Thirteen-year-old Habo, an albino, lives in Tanzania. Called “zeruzeru,” albinos are both highly prized and reviled. Some people even pay high prices for albino limbs, as witchcraft lore of some tribes there considers them to be magical. Some people believe so strongly that they are willing to kill to get albinos.
Starving in their home village, Habo, his mother, and his siblings immigrate to the city of Mwanza where they have relatives, hoping to find a stable place to live. Along the way, Habo must learn to deal with the feeling of being an outcast among outcasts for his pale skin.
But soon, a poacher of albino parts finds out about Habo and tries to capture him, Habo creeps out of the city and sneaks on a train heading to Dar-es-Salaam. There he is taken under the wing of an elderly blind sculptor. Habo enjoys learning to sculpt, but will he ever be able to leave the safety of his new home?
about the author
Tara Sullivan was born in Calcutta to parents who were international aid workers. Moving around South America and the Caribbean for most of her childhood and early teen years, Tara got used to having dinner table conversations about issues of poverty and international justice. The United States seemed like a faraway land to her, but when UV rays damaged her eyes in the Andes Mountains, her parents took her to Virginia to recuperate, and they ended up staying there.
Tara went to college at the University of Virginia, and then volunteered with an AmeriCorps organization in Minnesota, working to help refugees resettle, as well as helping indigent women in a prenatal clinic. She finished graduate school in Indiana and became a Spanish teacher in Massachusetts, where she lives today with her husband and a big, furry mutt of a dog.
Source:
Author website
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