The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John

One day eleven-year-old Martine is living in cold England where a snowstorm is predicted and the next day she is in hot South Africa where the heat is extreme. Martine cannot believe how quickly her life has changed. Orphaned by a fire that killed her parents in England, she must now go to live with her only relative—a grandmother she did not even know she had and who doesn’t seem to want her. Martine’s loneliness and sorrow are intensified when no one shows to pick her up at the airport and take her to the game preserve that her grandmother owns and operates. Eventually, Tendai, her grandmother’s employee comes and stops on the way home to visit his Aunt Grace, a Zulu healer with the second sight. Grace pronounces that the child (Martine) has the ‘gift’. African legend tells that a child who rides the white giraffe will have power over all the animals. Is this Martine’s destiny? The white giraffe is just a legend—or is it? How can it be that her mother and father never talked of her grandmother and her home in Africa? Why doesn’t grandmother want her? In spite of the way her grandmother feels and the difficulty she has making friends at her new school, why does she feel immediately at home in South Africa, as if that is where she was always supposed to be? Then one night when the white giraffe appears, it seems Grace’s prediction about Martine‘s destiny is about to become reality. Read this Rebecca Caudill 2010 nominee to find out the answer to these questions.