Tommy, the newcomer at Colliery Primary, wears a balaclava to school every day. Why? What could possibly be underneath? A terrible scar? Some alien life form? Dumisani and Doogle, aka the Doo Dudes and best friends in the world, are determined to find out. Whatever it takes. This school edition of Balaclava Boy is included in the Department of Basic Educations National Catalogue for Senior Phase learners. It has been revised and updated with activities for pre-reading and post-reading, questions according to cognitive levels, glossaries and notes on the genre of the novel. Memoranda available online at www.tafelberg.com.

Set in the fictional town of Gap Falls, where two young girls, Louise van Rensburg and Faheema Majiet, have become best friends despite their very different backgrounds. But cataclysmic events far beyond South Africa’s borders (bombings on the London Underground and an insensitive cartoon portrayal of the prophet Mohammed) serve to drive a wedge between them. When their respective families prohibit their friendship, they realise it is up to them to find a way to restore their relationship and to convince the adults of their deep emotional bond. The theme is tolerance and seeing similarities and common grounds. This novel was shortlisted for the MacMillan African Writers’ Prize. Jenny Robson has won both South African and international awards (Sanlam, M.E.R., Percy Fitzpatrick, UNESCO and Noma Honourable Mention).

Mess, also known as Mellow Yellow, is a street kid with only one desire: he wants to learn how to read. Because then he might be able to discover what secrets his precious green paper holds. The green paper is his most treasured possession. The Old Couple, who looked after him when he was still very small, told him to keep the paper safe until his mother came to fetch him. It has been many years now since they were forced to take him to the horrible Bean Man, and since he escaped from the Bean Man and went to live on the streets with the Cement-Mixers, but through all those years he has kept the paper safe in a flat tobacco tin next to his heart ... A wonderfully upbeat story about a street boy's experience on the streets as part of an alternative (that is, clean-living) streetgang, and how he in the end manages to find his mother.

Thoughtful, insightful and compelling, Granite is a well-executed imagining of what happened to cause the collapse of the civilisation of Great Zimbabwe (called Zimba Remabwe in the book). While adult historical fiction has experienced a recent resurgence in interest, narratives are mostly drawn from European history; Granite is refreshingly African, illuminating a relatively unexplored area in fiction. It also shifts “fictionalised history” away from the European centre: in the story, Zimba Remabwe exists as a sophisticated African city state well integrated with the rest of the mid-fifteenth-century world. It is a world in which Arab scholars travel from China and India to Europe and Britain, filing their chronicles in the revered library of Timbuktu. The narrative method is worth noting: because he cannot write, the story is dictated by a young nobleman called Mokomba – one of few survivors of his city’s downfall. The penman is Shafiq, a learned Arab traveller who is a father figure after the passing of Mokomba’s own father. Each chapter relates a series of events from these two characters’ perspectives, as they fill in what the other might have glossed over. The result is a finely rendered narrative of two distinct voices.