Young Adult Novels

“By far, Africa is where my fondest memories are.” – Cristina Kessler

YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

The Odyssey of Iz

This is a story of adventures involving a talking chevron trade bead with the power to travel through time and a young Sudanese girl, Izdihar. Izdihar finds a beautiful chevron trade bead on the desert sands one night after a giant haboob dust storm. Desperate to leave the village before her parents marry her off to an old man, she asks the bead to take her back through its life. Her shock at suddenly sitting in a bead maker’s workshop in Italy in 1769, deepens when she realizes he is admiring the exact same bead she found on the desert 250 years later.

What follows is a journey taking Izdihar through time travel and places, following the bead’s life and all the things traded for it by a string of owners. Izdihar names the bead Bella, and an adventure begins starting in Murano, Italy in the 1800s, more than two hundred years before present time. Together she and the rather cocky bead travel to Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and back to Sudan. Izdihar’s ticket home is based upon her asking the bead the right question. She learns many things along the way, including how much the present resembles the past, and the importance of not making instant judgements.

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Award-Winning Young Adult Novels by Cristina Kessler

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A Tale from Africa

To all the young girls of the world—Follow your courage.

Set in Maasailand in Kenya and is about a culture facing change, rhino poaching and bush survival. Twelve-year-old Namelok can’t tell anyone about the mother black rhino and her baby that she found in the bush while collecting firewood for her Maasai tribe. She vows to protect them always, visit them often, and to keep them secret. But when her initiation into womanhood threatens her secret visits, Namelok must say goodbye to her precious animal friends. Before she can, though, she makes a horrifying discovery, one that sends her on a harrowing journey into the bush in a desperate search for poachers and the justice they deserve. Cristina Kessler has written a powerful and authentic story of a young girl’s love for a rhino mother and her baby, and of her courage to challenge tradition to defend them.

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About Ikut Swami

Ikut Swami is a publication and production company established in honor of our beloved late Cristina Kessler, celebrating the legacy of her vision through her books, photography, humanitarianism and the education she gave to children and young adults around the world.

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“With my books for kids I have a personal writing agenda, which is to get the good news out about Africa.” – Cristina Kessler