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When Boipelo reads about a Canadian man who trades a red paper clip on the Internet for a house, he decides to try a similar idea in his village. He starts trading with a clay cow and ends up with... an unexpected result. Can he bear the embarrassment of the whole village laughing at his idea? How will he fix his relationship with his best friend? Will the girl he admires think he's an idiot? And will he dodge the shady deals that people want him to make.

A 2022 Skipping Stones Honor AwardeeNamed a Best Middle-Grade Book of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews2021 Outstanding International Books List, United States Board on Books for Young PeopleMercy lives in modern-day Pietermaritzburg, South Africa with her eccentric foster aunts—two elderly sisters so poor, they can only afford one lightbulb. A nasty housing developer is eying their house. And that same house suddenly starts falling apart—just as Aunt Flora starts falling apart. She’s forgetting words, names, and even how to behave in public. Mercy tries to keep her head down at school so nobody notices her. But when a classmate frames her for stealing the school’s raffle money, Mercy's teachers decide to take a closer look at her home life.Along comes Mr. Singh, who rents the back cottage of the house on Hodson Road. When he takes Mercy to visit a statue in the middle of the city, she learns that the shy, nervous “Mohandas” he tells stories about is actually Gandhi, who spent a cold and lonely night in the waiting room of the Pietermaritzburg train station over a hundred years ago. It marked the beginning of his life’s quest for truth…and the visit to his statue marks Mercy’s realization that she needs—just like Gandhi—to stand up for herself.Mercy needs a miracle. But to summon that miracle, she has to find her voice and tell the truth—and that truth is neither pure nor simple.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard SelectionA 2024 Skipping Stones Honor Award winner Winner of The Next Generation Indie Book Award A Nile Book Award nominee for the White Nile Book AwardFrom the award-winning author of Small Mercies, named a Best Middle-Grade Book of 2020 by Kirkus ReviewsWhen Boipelo Seku learns about a man who traded his way from a paperclip to a house, he starts a trade of his own in his small village of Cedarville, South Africa, accidentally setting in motion a string of good deeds that will change his community forever."I’ve decided that some people put out fires and leave the world cold and hopeless and others nurse the kindling, blow like mad and fan the flames with whatever they have at hand - so that everyone feels its warmth."A lot of things can feel just out of reach in 12-year-old Boipelo Seku's small, impoverished village of Cedarville, South Africa. The idea of one day living in a house that's big enough for his family is just a faraway dream. But when Boi stumbles on a story about a Canadian man who traded his way from a paperclip to a house, Boi hatches his own trading plan starting with a tiny clay cow he molded from river mud. Trade by trade, Boi and his best friend Potso discover that even though Cedarville lacks so many of the things that made the paperclip trade possible, it is fuller than either of them ever imagined.In a chain of events that turns Boi's tiny spark into a warming fire, Boi learns the power of friendship and community, and finds that something’s value isn’t in what you can trade for it, but in the good it brings to the people you love.With a motley crew of characters, wholehearted humor, and a whole lot of hope, The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap is a joyful read for lovers of The Penderwicks or classics like The Moffats.