Hanna Jansen was born in 1946 and grew up in Osnabrück. After university she spent many years working as a teacher and writing text books. She now devotes much of her time to her family in which ten children, most of them war orphans from Africa and Asia, have found a new home. This is her first novel. A second novel, based on a true story of the murder of a Tutsi family in Rwanda during the ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, will be published next spring. Translation rights available from K Thienemanns Verlag GmbH & Co Blumenstrasse 36 D-70182 Stuttgart Tel: +49 711 21055 0 Fax: +49 711 21055 39 e-mail: info@thienemann.de Rights already sold to - Denmark (Carlsen) and Netherlands (Clavis) Applications for assistance with translation costs - Germany K. Thienemann Verlag Founded in 1849, this is one of the oldest publishers of books for children in the German-speaking world. There are some four hundred titles available at present, from picture books for the very young to novels for young adults, with ninety percent as original editions. Thienemann books have been published in over fifty countries, led by classic authors Otfried Preussler and Michael Ende. In 2001 the Thienemann Verlag was sold to the Swedish Bonnier Group.