''The Diddakoi'' is a 1972

children's novel Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...

Rumer Godden Margaret Rumer Godden (10 December 1907 – 8 November 1998) was an English author of more than 60 fiction and non-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films, most notably ''Black Narcissus'' in 1947 and '' The River'' in ...

. Set in England, it features an orphan traveller or

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

girl, seven-year-old Kizzy Lovell, who faces persecution, grief, and loss in a hostile, close-knit, village community. The title is an alternative spelling of "

didicoy Romanichal Travellers ( ; more commonly known as English Gypsies or English Travellers) are a Romani people, Romani subgroup within the United Kingdom and other parts of the English-speaking world. There are an estimated 200,000 Romani in the ...

", the

Angloromani Angloromani or Anglo-Romani (literally "English Romani"; also known as Angloromany, Rummaness, or Pogadi Chib) is a mixed language of Indo European origin involving the presence of Romani vocabulary and syntax in the English used by descendants of ...

term for a person of mixed ancestry. ''The Diddakoi'' won the 1972

Whitbread Award The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...

in the Children's Book category, honouring the year's best English-language work by a writer based in Britain or Ireland. It was dramatised as a television serial, '' Kizzy'' (1976), which was produced by

Dorothea Brooking Dorothea Brooking (née Smith Wright; 7 December 1916 – 23 March 1999) was an English children's television producer and director. She also contributed to works for television, mainly early in her career, and in other capacities. Life and ...

for the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

, with Vanessa Furst as Kizzy. Decades later it was adapted as a BBC radio drama of the same name, with Nisa Cole in the lead role..
First broadcast 11 and 18 March 2012 by BBC Radio 4 Extra. Last broadcast September 2013.
BBC provides these capsules for the two 30-minute episodes: (1) "After her gran dies, half-gypsy Kizzy faces an uncertain future, living with Miss Brooke and trouble at school." (2) "Kizzy is a diddakoi, a half-gypsy who finds her world turned upside when her beloved gran dies."

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

republished the novel in 2002 under the title ''Gypsy Girl''.

References

Costa Book Award-winning works British children's novels 1972 British novels Novels about orphans Macmillan Publishers books Fictional representations of Romani people 1972 children's books {{1970s-child-novel-stub