The diary of Ma Yan - Yan Ma

No more money for school this year. I till the land in order to pay for my brothers' schooling. When I think of the happy times at school, I can almost imagine myself there. How I want to study!' - Ma Yan, aged 13

When the journalist Pierre Haski was passed three small brown notebooks in a remote province in Northeastern China, an extraordinary friendship began. 'A few years ago in the remote village of Zhangjiashu in Ningxia region of northern China Ma Yan was distraught because her parents could not afford to keep her in school. Today she is the 16-year-old author of Ma Yan's Diary which has appeared in seventeen languages . Thanks to its publication, her family is no longer poor, and 250 other Ningxia youngsters, mostly girls, now have scholarships to continue studying' New York Times