By Beverly Naidoo
Summary:
Sade (Pronounced Sha-day) Solaja and her younger brother Femi live in Lagos, Nigeria with their mama and papa who is an outspoken journalist for the Speak newspaper in Lagos. The Solaja family have a carefree life until the day that mama is shot directly in the heart, right in front of Sade and papa. Papa and his brother Tunde soon know that people are out to kill the Solaja family and that Sade and Femi need to go into hiding, quickly.
Before they know it, Sade and Femi are smuggled under fake identities to England to find their Uncle Dele. But when they arrive in the foreign country, they learn that Uncle Dele has already left the country without giving anyone any notice... Sade and Femi must find their way through the back streets of London, penniless, to safety. They need help, but they must stick with their fake identities, because being discovered as refugees is the last thing that need...
Review:
The Other Side Of Truth is honestly one of the best books of all time. It is a page-turner and a tear-jerker. The story is such a sad one but once you reach the end of the book you realize that it is a very inspiring story. It is a tear-jerker because whenever you feel the tension that Sade does in a difficult situation you start to want to help her, and you start crying because you feel helpless. I love the sense of connection to Sade that this gives me. Sade is one of the best-described characters that I have ever read about, and I think that she was the perfect character to put into a story like The Other Side of Truth. There are many good moments and many bad moments in this book, and Sade is the perfect, patient, smart, adventurous character for the story.
It is a very emotional book which is good from my point of view, because when you have an emotional story it makes people feel more attached to the book. It makes the reader think that they are in the story and that the feel connection with the emotional bits of the story.
In The Other Side of Truth Sade and Femi's actions are very, very well portrayed. But, I will say that at one particular bit in the book Femi becomes very stubborn and I think that it slows the story down a lot and you sometimes want to put the book down because Femi does such outrageous things! You will get used to it though and just ignore it in the end.
The author, Beverly Naidoo, manages to combine their actions into a bit of their past. For example, if the author says that Sade sounded extremely excited, she would add on a sentence or two of a flashback of Sade's past. The sentence would then become something like: Sade sounded extremely excited, her face was almost as happy as it was when she was given her first doll. It is an interesting way to tell us what the character is doing right now, but also tell us a little bit about an event that occurred in the character's past life.
Another fact that I liked about The Other Side Of Truth is that at the beginning of the book when the story is set in Lagos, the writer, Beverly Naidoo, gives us a good description of all of the places that Sade and Femi go. I don't know much about Nigeria but when Naidoo gave us a look at Lagos it made me feel like I was going on an adventure somewhere, exploring a new city as I walked through it. It was a great idea to blend that into the story.
There are many, many good thing to say about The Other Side Of Truth but I don't want to give away any of the events!
Breathtaking book. Definitely deserves the medal (Carnegie Medal, 2000) that it has won.
Recommended for any tween 12+
224 pages
