The Heaven Shop

The Heaven Shop

Bibliography

Ellis, Deborah. 2004. The Heaven Shop. Allston, MA: Fitzhenry & Whiteside. ISBN 1550419080.

Plot Summary

This is the story of a family that is deeply affected by the AIDS academic in Malawi. The main character of the story is Binti Phiri. She starts out as a happy go lucky child who is actually a bit snobby and thinks of herself as “special” since she has a part on a radio show. Binti has an older sister and a younger brother and they all start the story as a fairly happy family. They have already lost their mother to an illness, and they live with their loving and caring father in a home that is attached to the father’s work place. He is a coffin builder and his shop is called The Heaven Shop. In basically the space of a week Binti and her sibling’s world comes crashing down around them. They are living a nice life with a house, nice clothes and private school education. The next thing they know their father gets sick and dies. They have very little money and their father had nothing saved for them since whenever he had extra money he would send it to the “cousins”. Some of Binti’s awful relatives come to get the children. They divide the children up, and take all their money and most of their possessions. Binti has a difficult time accepting her new position in life. She cannot believe how she could go from being so special, to becoming an Aids outcast. The relatives that she goes to live with treat her as an Aids outcast since they believe the children must have Aids, since both their parents have died from the disease. She eventually runs away from the aunt and uncle’s house and finds her grandma “Gogo”. Gogo is a smart and strong woman who is disgusted with the treatment that her children have bestowed on her grandchildren, and declares that she wants nothing more to do with them, and that all her good children have died. Binti is thrilled to be living with her grandmother that loves her, but the situation she is in still far from good. Her grandmother takes in Aids orphans and there is barely enough food and shelter to go around. At this point we discover that these are the cousins that the father had been sending his extra money to. Binti has many things to learn at Gogo’s and she is not always easy to live with. We see her truly become a strong and good person as she begins to see that the world does not revolve around Binti. She has to learn many lessons the hard way, but she comes out a stronger and more caring person because of her life’s twists and turns. She is able to find her brother and her sister, and when Gogo dies she is able, along with several of the “cousins”, to figure out how to keep the place going and provide for her new and extended family. The story ends with the three siblings being together again and opening a coffin building business called The Heaven Shop.

Critical Analysis

Ellis paints a very real picture of the Aids epidemic in Africa without being preachy about it. Her portrayal of this family and the difficulties that they experience makes the story not about Aids, but about people. The life and culture appears to be authentic and feels real. The author incorporates many words seamlessly into the story such as noting that when someone asks Binti if she has a Gogo, that the text explains that Gogo is what Malawians called their grandmothers. Even though the story is fictional the places in the book are real places. In the author’s note at the end, a map is shown of the places that were talked about in the story. She also gives some information about HIV and Aids in the author’s note. The theme throughout the book is that all people need compassion and dignity. Her characters show that it doesn’t matter what race people are, that there will be the good along with the bad, and that the need to belong and be loved is present in all people.

Review Excerpts

From School Library JournalGrade 6-9–When 13-year-old Binti Phiri's coffin-making father dies, a grandmother she hardly knows says what no one in Malawi likes to admit: the man, like his wife, died of AIDS. Now orphaned, Binti and her siblings are sent to relatives far from home. A Cinderella-like existence with an uncle whose family ostracizes them and steals their money proves so intolerable that her older sister runs away. Binti, too, escapes and makes her way to her grandmother's village. There she discovers her Gogo surrounded by children, cousins and pretend cousins, all dealing with the effects of the epidemic. A local AIDS activist eventually finds Binti's brother, in jail, and her sister, working as a prostitute. Reunited, the young people open their own coffin shop. The author's travel in the area informs her work, but the message, though important, threatens to overwhelm the story. Binti is a well-developed character, but the others and the events of their lives seem to have been introduced in service to plot; they don't come alive the way the Afghans do in Ellis's "Breadwinner" trilogy (Groundwood) or the way the AIDS victims and their relatives do in Alan Stratton's Chanda's Secret (Annick, 2004). Readers with an interest in faraway places won't mind, though; they will cheer as Binti, self-centered and self-important when life is good, learns through adversity and through the model of her grandmother to think and behave more generously. Teachers and librarians looking for fiction about sub-Saharan Africa will find this title a useful addition.–Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From BooklistGr. 5-8. Like Allan Stratton's Chanda's Secrets [BKL Jl 04], but for a younger audience, this is a poignant story of a child caught up in the AIDS crisis in southern Africa. Binti, 13, lives in a city in Malawi, attends a private church school, and stars in a weekly radio show. Her mother is dead, and then her father dies. No one talks about why until her tough grandmother, Gogo, announces that they died of AIDS. Binti is taken in by cruel relatives, her sister becomes a prostitute, and her brother lands in prison, but they finally reunite with Gogo in a poor rural community. The plot is contrived, and Binti speaks like a Western child at times. But Ellis, who has written about children in crisis in Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine, and visited Malawi, creates a vivid sense of the place and characters that are angry, kind, brave, and real. The facts about AIDS--the statistics, denial, discrimination, and ignorance--drive the story. Proceeds from book sales go to UNICEF. Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Connections

Age appropriate research on the Aids epidemic in the U.S.A. and in Africa can be done.
Middle school age students can read other books about teens in Africa and the aids epidemic such as :
Chanda’ s Secret by Allan Stratton