Beverley Naidoo

This is the story of love, commitment and the flowering of the human spirit against the background of South Africa’s apartheid.Frightened that their baby sister Dineo will die, thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother Tiro run away from their grandmother to Johannesburg to find their mother, who works there as a maid. Their journey illustrates at every turn the grim realities of apartheid – the pass laws, bantustans, racism, the breakdown of family life.The opulence of the white “Madam’s” house contrasts starkly with the reality that Naledi and Tiro face – that their baby sister is suffering from starvation, not an incurable disease.

Beautifully retold by the award-winning author Beverley Naidoo, this earliest-known version of Cinderella is brought to life for the modern- day reader. Rhodopis is a Greek girl who is sold into slavery by bandits and taken to Egypt. Along the way she becomes friends with the storyteller Aesop and a host of playful animals. Her master gives her a pair of beautiful rose-red slippers, making three other servants jealous. But when Horus, the falcon, sweeps in to steal her slipper, Rhodopis has little idea that this act will lead her to the King of Egypt. The first in our `One Story, Many Voices' series, this ancient story of Cinderella finds its echo in fairy tales all over the world.