Emily Green and Me — Kathryn White

After years of illness, eleven-year-old Emily receives the heart of a seventeen-year-old boy who has died in a motor-bike accident. But the organ comes with an attachment:the boy who had it first is still hanging around. From'up there' he watches as she recovers - sometimes exasperated, other times with heart-warming tenderness. Their worlds couldn't be more different. Emily is from upper-middle-class Cape Town and the boy was from poorer plot-dwelling folk living near Johannesburg. While Emily struggles with becoming a teenager, the boy's interjections are a laugh a minute - not even death can dampen his streetwise spirit. Following the closely-linked fates of these two endearing characters, Emily Green and Me is the poignant story of one life interrupted and one that is just unfolding. A book for all of us who blink at the twin stars of life and death, and all that lies between.