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Every day for the next ten days we will be significantly marking down a different book that is special to the Bridge Books journey.
Today is The Golden Rhino by Griffin Shea.

Bridge Books started from my journey in trying to get The Golden Rhino published.

As one does when transitioning from journalism, I went off and wrote a book. But instead of doing a political book, I wrote a mystery for young readers.

Finding a home for a manuscript takes a while, and that’s when I started getting interested in how publishing works. Where do all of the books published in South Africa come from, and where do they end up? Why were they so hard to find?

That’s when I started wandering around Park Station. At the time, 1.2 million people passed through the station every day. Surely a couple of them were readers.

But googling found no bookstores around Park Station. No one in my suburban orbit knew of any. And yet, when I came down to explore, the first sign I saw walking out toward De Villiers Street was a sandwich board shouting BOOKS. Over the next months, I kept walking and met more than 60 booksellers. Almost all of them dealing in second-hand books. Almost all foreign titles. Very little for young people.

Linking up publishers to these booksellers, in a very casual and haphazard way, is how Bridge began. By the time Clockwork Books picked up my manuscript and published in 2020, we had the book launch in the CBD.

The story is about a boy named Never, who rescues a newborn rhino from poachers. They’re evacuated to Mapungubwe, where he makes two new friends and explores the spaces where the real golden rhino was found. Together they uncover the poaching ring. It’s also about adoption, and being different, and finding a home. Some of my big life themes.