Against the Odds

‘It’s about something called the odds,’ said my mother. ‘For instance, the odds that you’ll become a millionaire are very, very small. The odds that you’ll find a coin in the street are a lot bigger. And it’s the same thing with fathers. The odds of having a father are big, and the odds of not having a father are small. So you don’t have to worry too much about not having a father.”Can you make the odds of something smaller?’ I asked. ‘Or bigger?’ ‘Yes,’ my mother said. ‘Sometimes.’Kiki’s father, a doctor, is always putting himself in danger by travelling to faraway war zones. No matter how much she tries, Kiki can’t convince him not to go. When her father actually does go missing, and as her mother gets more and more worried, Kiki decides she has to try and improve the odds of her father coming home, the only way she can.A powerful, sad, yet funny book about what to do when something you’ve always feared becomes all too real.