The Odyssey of Iz — Cristina Kessler

This is a story of adventures involving a talking chevron trade bead with the power to travel through time and a young Sudanese girl, Izdihar. Izdihar finds a beautiful chevron trade bead on the desert sands one night after a giant haboob dust storm. Desperate to leave the village before her parents marry her off to an old man, she asks the bead to take her back through its life. Her shock at suddenly sitting in a bead maker's workshop in Italy in 1769, deepens when she realizes he is admiring the exact same bead she found on the desert 250 years later. What follows is a journey taking Izdihar through time travel and places, following the bead's life and all the things traded for it by a string of owners. Izdihar names the bead Bella, and an adventure begins starting in Murano, Italy in the 1800s, more than two hundred years before present time. Together she and the rather cocky bead travel to Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and back to Sudan. Izdihar's ticket home is based upon her asking the bead the right question. She learns many things along the way, including how much the present resembles the past, and the importance of not making instant judgements.