Mahtab’s Story (Libby Gleeson, A&U, $15.95 pb, ISBN 9781741753349, May) ****

Libby Gleeson’s latest novel sees her on familiar ground, writing a gripping story about an issue that is too often ignored by writers for young people. Although she is a strong and confident writer, Gleeson never allows her voice to overshadow that of her protagonist, the 12-year-old girl from Afghanistan, whose spirit wins her a place in the heart of the reader. When we first meet Mahtab she has a mouth full of diesel and dust. She is spending days in darkness with her family, jammed in between packing cases, in the back of a truck traveling the dangerous and circuitous route over the mountains to escape into Pakistan. Mahtab’s world collapsed when the Taliban regime reached her front door. After much deliberation, her family decided that the unknown Australia represented a safe haven. Much of the story covers the period in hiding in Pakistan, waiting (fruitlessly) to hear from her father that has gone on ahead. Mahtab’s mother then decides to take the family to meet the refugee boat at a remote Indonesian port, with the inevitable result when they are picked up by Australian immigration authorities somewhere off the coast of Darwin. Mahtab’s Story is ultimately uplifting. Aimed at the 10 to 14-year-olds, it makes an important contribution to the contemporary children’s literature on refugees.

Toni Whitmont is a bookseller at Lindfield Children’s Bookshop

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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