Annick Press, 2008    North America	Bloomsbury, 2009    United Kingdom

also to be released in:

Australia/New Zealand by Allen & Unwin (2009)
Holland and Belgium - De Kern/De Fonteyn (2009)
French North America - La courte échelle (2010)
Germany, Switzerland and Austria - Droemer Knaur (2009)
Italy - Sperling & Kupfer/Mondadori (2010)
Spanish World - Intermon Oxfam (2010)
Brazil - Editora Planeta (2010)
Korea - TheBookInMyLife (2010)
India - Mehta Publishing Company
(date of release to be announced)
Slovenia - Zalozba Alica (2011)

Awards

2010 – finalist, SYRCA’s 2010
Snow Willow Award

2009, Norma Fleck Award

2009, Gold Award Winner
National Parenting Publications Awards
(NAPPA)

Canadian Children¹s Book Centre
Best Books for Kids & Teens 2009

2009, winner
Next Generation Indie Book Awards,
Young Adult Non-Fiction

Selected as one of
The White Ravens
outstanding new international
books of the year, 2009,
Munich, Germany

Silver Award Winner,
2009 Nautilus Book Awards

YA Non-Fiction List,
Pennsylvania
School Librarians Association

Short-listed for the 2009,
American Library Association
non-fiction, young adult
book of the year.


Children’s and Young Adults,
Notable Books, 2009
International Reading Association

Silver Award Winner,
ForeWord Magazine
2008 Book of the Year Award,
YA Non-Fiction

Bite of the Mango

The astounding story of one girl’s journey from war victim to UNICEF Special Representative.

As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry.

But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands.

Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived. The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown.

As told to her by Mariatu, journalist Susan McClelland has written the heartbreaking true story of the brutal attack, its aftermath and Mariatu’s eventual arrival in Toronto where she began to pull together the pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope.

Read an Excerpt...

Reviews

To view a trailer for Bite of the Mango with footage shot in Sierra Leone by Sorious Samura, please click here.

Mariatu Kamara is featured in Nick Danziger's Femmes face a la Guerre (Women
facing War).