The Butterfly Heart by Irish Author Paula Leyden will be published by Walker Books in March '11.
Paula has published a website and Blog click here.
"I decided to write The Butterfly Heart for many reasons – but the initial idea came to me through a memory that has haunted me. While I was at primary school in Zambia a school friend of mine was taken out of school and married off to an old man. At the time this upset me deeply and I felt helpless to do anything about it.
So in some ways I wrote the story for her, and for young girls in many parts of the world that this has happened to and continues to happen to. These children, and they are children, are robbed of their childhoods, condemned to a world of pain, premature childbirth, HIV/AIDS and death. This is not something that should happen to anyone, anywhere, ever."
