<DIV><I>The Children's Day</I> follows the life of Simon, a boy living in a free-state village during the apartheid years of the 1960s. Through a series of finely drawn and illuminating episodes, the novel captures the essence of what it was like to grow up in a society fraught with strange and often violent contradictions of class, race, gender, and language. Adolescence, in all its angst and confusion, is explored through the acute eyes of Simon, who is torn between scorn for his surroundings and a desire to belong. It is through the lives of the novel's poignant, vulnerable, and sometimes eccentric characters ? Mr. de Wet, with his disconcerting eyes; chinless Betty; Miss Rheeder with her ever-present red shoes; Trevor, with his blonde bangs and pink shirt ? that Simon comes to understand what the complexity of love can mean.</DIV>