The story of a girl reporter in the nineteen forties. "Penny of the Morning Star", was commissioned more than fifty years ago for use by ESL students in South African schools. At that time it contained an English/Afrikaans glossary and comprehension questions, but even then students would rather discuss the characters-particularly why, in his early thirties, the Morning Star editor Paul Jansen was prematurely grey and his behaviour often so unpredictable. The author admits that she could not really explain those characteristics, even to herself, which is why she felt so strongly that what would now very likely have to be the last book she would ever publish, would have to be a re-write of Penny-not as a school book this time-and completely updated, while still set in the post-war 1940's ... because, having witnessed what happened to some of those very students after the Angolan War, she is finally able to able to understand that editor.

978-0-9733625-3-4

[2011]