Opening paragraphs....................

It was Saturday, which meant that Julius would be spared the shame of school.  He would not be hectored by a teacher demanding tuition and thus wouldn't have to jump out a window to escape a caning.  He wouldn't fee humiliated by his lack of a school blouse, he wouldn't grow light-headed because he had nothing to eat between dawn and evening, and his guts wouldn't seize because he'd drunk out of a ditch where the cattle wallowed.

-John Brant,  The Boy who Runs:  The Odyssey of Julius Achon