When Melissa is told at the age of 11 that she is HIV positive, she believes she will die. The doctor explains that she won’t but must take her medicine every day. He also explains how HIV is acquired, and she learns that it was probably through her mum, who had breast fed her. She then tells us more about what HIV and AIDS are in simple terms that can be easily understood. She has become defensive about her condition and tells no one, not even her closest friends: ‘So inside I always felt like I was keeping a secret.’ She learns to mask her feelings and seem happy and jokey while suffering internally. Finally she decides to stop taking her medicine because it makes her sick. Disaster strikes when her knees become arthritic and she has to have operations on both. After this, she goes to a place where she meets other children with HIV and begins to regain her confidence. When she tells her two best friends about her condition, they are loving and supportive, and she learns to cope. There is lots of good simple information in this book about the basics of HIV and AIDS, including a page at the back which gives further details and will be useful for project work. The pictures are produced digitally by Mosaic Films and are redolent of the subject.