Emma Shevah

Emma Shevah places an exuberant aspiring performer at the center of Dara Palmer’s Major Drama. Dara, a British schoolgirl adopted from Cambodia, expects to win the leading part in a school production of The Sound of Music. When she receives no role, the disappointment makes her question whether prejudice and the absence of performers who look like her have shaped the decision. Shevah follows Dara through jealousy, family tension, and an after-school drama group until she begins creating a part that reflects her own life. Helen Crawford-White's margin illustrations echo Dara's energetic inner commentary. Chicken House first published the story in Britain, and Sourcebooks Jabberwocky issued the American edition in 2016 for a middle-grade audience. The novel joins performance comedy to questions about transracial adoption, Cambodian heritage, confidence, and belonging. Shevah, a London-born writer of Irish and Thai heritage, has lived in several countries, and her fiction often gives lively young narrators room to examine complicated family identities without losing their humor.