Recently in Africa Children's Books Category

From FAVL volunteer Brianna Osetinsky:

At the beginning of February we officially began the book distribution with the visitors from the Chen Yet-Sen Foundation. Randomly selected students from the schools in the library communities would be receiving three books of their choice. After visiting the libraries, the visitors met with seven of the students, and inaugurated the program by giving them books of their choice.

On February 27 Lucas, Richard, Maxwell, Simon, and myself began traveling to schools to complete the book distribution for the rest of the students. Our car was laden with 10 boxes of books, with a mix of titles to give the students a wide range of choices. Most were African themed, like Kofi Has Malaria, The Cunning Tortoise, or Mumaizu and the Hippos, but we still had several titles with international themes, such as A Trip to the Theater, and a young readers edition of A Tale of Two Cities. In total we had 75 different titles for the students to chose from.

Before we began, we met with the Heads who were very enthusiastic about the book distribution. They helped us arrange a room to set up the books and worked with the teachers to alert the students. They thanked us for supporting their school by providing their students with resources to improve their reading.

The teachers were also helpful in gathering the students who were selected, and volunteering their classrooms. Some of the teachers asked for books themselves, but we encouraged them to make use of the libraries and explained that the books had to go to the children.

The students had been randomly selected the previous summer, and were in Primary 6 or Junior High School Form 1. They pulsed with nervous excitement as they filled out their questionnaire. Some were talkative and had to be reminded that the questionnaires we to be filled out individually, and others kept looking around at their friends and classmates who hung around the windows curiously. Still others worked with grave concentration, as if they believed they would not get the books if they wrote the wrong answers or took too long to complete the questions.

Once they finished the questionnaire, we allowed up to five students at a time to select their books. Some of the children rushed through in their excitement, still managing to pick out some of my favorite titles from the bunch. Others were more deliberate, and leafed through all of the books before carefully making their selections. As I recorded the student's selections we reminded them that the books were now their very own. They could share them with friends and family, but they should take good care of the books because they were theirs now. The students smiled proudly as they left holding their new books. Even though they probably should have returned to class, many of them sat outside the classrooms already engrossed in their new books.

Here's a nice review from TheBookbag.co.uk Stephen lives in Djibo, Burkina Faso!

Life is pretty chaotic in Timbuktu where Ali Haji Amadu lives with his wives, children and their many animals. They have one dangle-tailed donkey, two snaggle-toothed camels, three curvy-horned cows, four wobble-legged lambs and five goggle-eyed goats. That would probably be enough if the goats were not so troublesome and mischievous, munching and chewing everything in sight. At the insistence of his three wives, Fama, Rama and Sama, Ali Haji sets off to Mopti Market with the intention of selling the goats. It's a long trek but he finally arrives early the following morning and tries to find someone to buy them. It's not as easy as he expects though, especially when certain members of his family, having followed him, decide to intervene. It seems that the goats are wanted after all even though there is always such a hullabaloo when they are around. This is a fabulous children's book and the thing that you notice above all are the vibrant, energetic illustrations. The pictures are so exciting and really help to tell the story and to bring the characters alive. My daughter was quite mesmerised by the stunning pictures on the front cover before even opening up the book but once she did, she thought that the pictures just kept getting better and better and brighter and brighter.

So the other day, I talked about how Dounko and some of the FAVL librarians just recently distributed Kathy Knowles color and Pain-Crocodile books to students who received vouchers from the LED lamp research project.I promised more pictures, but I have something even more exciting! A video! (I'm still honing my video editing skills, so bear with me). So without further ado, I give you LED Project : Distribution of Books December 2011.

Recently we had a distribution of books in village for the LED project that took place earlier this year. Through the lottery, some kids received lamps while others received vouchers for books. The books were distributed to students by the librarians, teachers and Dounko; they were the Kathy Knowles color books in Jula. Each child received 4 color books and one Pain-Crocodile book. They were very excited to have them! Dounko brought many photos to Ouaga with him. Tomorrow I will post more of them, but today I just wanted to share my favorite photo. It is of Paul, a primary school student in Sara. I worked really closely with him during reading camp. At the beginning of the week, he could not even read the alphabet and was very shy. By the end of the week, he was able to sound out words and read simple sentences on his own. I was so proud of him during the final evaluation when he volunteered to read a paragraph aloud for all the students. He didn't make one error. Here is a picture of him smiling with his brand-new books!

The "Akissi" series is similar to "Aya de Yopougon," which Abouet also authored. Akissi, like Aya, is a young girl living in Yopougon, Ivory Coast.  Akissi, however, is about six years old, with the series targeting a much younger audience.
"Akissi: Attaque de chats" consists of seven mini stories.  The themes and storyline are quite childish, mostly revolving around Akissi fighting with her older brother Fofana. Despite her young age, Akissi is one tough little girl. She's adventurous, confident and stubborn. In one story she's determined to prove to her brother and his friends that she, a girl, can play soccer. In another story she comes home covered with bruises and a black eye after fighting to save her beloved pet, a monkey, from becoming a neighbor's dinner.

Even if it's supposed to target young people, I still found myself laughing out loud. I thought the title story was great. Akissi's mother asks her to bring a sack of fish to a family friend. When giving her directions, instead of giving her street names, they are more like: Go to the blue house, turn left, when you pass the woman selling fried donuts, keep straight. You'll see the tailor's store on the right..." Even in Burkina's capital of Ouaga, directions were pretty much explained in this exact way. Akissi of course gets lost, and reminded me of the countless times I found myself wandering the streets of Ouaga, trying to find the damn red door next to the woman selling peanuts.
The book also received thumbs up from Elisée. I caught him snickering out loud and when he was finished he said that he experienced many of the things mentioned in the book as a child growing up in the Ivory Coast. One story mentions two movies that Elisée says were incredibly popular when he was a kid and watched countless times. The book also mentions the word "Kokota", meaning when another kid hits you on top of your head with their knuckle, which he remembered suffering from quite often.

I have a feeling "Akissi" will be another hit in the library, and hopefully will bring in younger readers.

Around this time last year, my fellow PCV, Sabrina, and myself were looking for materials in bookstores in Ouaga for the girls' clubs in our respective villages. We browsed and eventually bought a couple of things, but we were discouraged (1) by how expensive books were for the average PCV who wanted to teach their kids a thing or two about good health practices and (2) by how out-of-reach the reading materials were for the average Burkinabè village child. The images and stories were not relevant to their lives and the language level was such that we figured we would probably end up having to teach French lessons instead of health lessons (and try explaining the literary French tense to a kid who can't conjugate most verbs correctly in the present!). So we did what PCVs do best when we find our resources inadequate - we decided to create our own! And there, in the DIACFA parking lot, was born the idea of a series of children's health books in very, very simple French with drawings and stories the kids would not only learn from, but relate to as well. The kids would be named Awa and Hamidou; they would eat tô for dinner; they would take their afternoon rest on mats outside. Our idea was that PCVs could have these books available to them through the PCBF website, be able to print them off at no cost, take them back to village for girls' clubs, demonstrations, health lessons, etc. to more easily teach their kids about how to better take care of their health.

 

And I'm proud to say that after much procrastination and anticipation, the first of book in the series is ready for distribution! It's the story of Issaka, a baby who is sick with diarrhea, and how a family friend, Aminata, teaches his mother, Awa, how to better care for him (see the cover page below). As a FAVL volunteer, I thought this would be a great material to have available at our libraries, and luckily, Michael agreed. So we're going to print some copies and send them to the librarians, who can use them in animations. I'm also working on translating them into English so we can send some copies to the Ghana libraries.

 

Coming soon: the second in the series, a tale that recounts the importance of washing one's hands (which will be great for Global Hand Washing Day on October 15^th)!

Discovered this wonderful blog while reading a nice discussion of children's books and publishing....

Librarians at Bologna - Part 2: La Joie Par Les Livres Last week, I talked about Patricia Aldana's address to the International Meeting of Children's Librarians in Bologna. Our second speaker on that occasion was Viviana Quiñones, who spoke to us about the French national children's book organisation La Joie par les Livres. After running through its history, she told us about some of their initiatives in promoting children's books, such as travelling exhibitions of African books and books about the Arab world, the Caribbean and around the Indian Ocean. They also publish two magazines: "La Revue des livres pour enfants" and "Takam Tikou", which focuses on multicultural books in French. Of particular interest was what Viviana had to say about their work with libraries and independent publishers in Africa. Like Patricia Aldana, she stressed how important it is for children in Africa to find their own experiences mirrored in the books they read: and to read books that are reasonably up to date and written in their own language. In 1985, internationally renowned librarian Geneviève Patte visited Mali, where she found that most of the library books were inadequate... In 1987 she set up a service within La Joie par les Livres to collaborate with libraries and the publishers of African children's books to promote locally published books. La Joie par les Livres also trains librarians, which contributes to raising the status of the libraries in the eyes of local communities. Viviana said that there are still challenges, for example, with the distribution of books, but that in the world of African publishing, there are some inspirational stories. Afterwards, a book was recommended to me called Courage and Consequence: Women Publishing in Africa edited by Mary Jay and Susan Kelly and published by the African Books Collective. In fact, I had been sitting right next to Pili Dumea from Tanzania and across the room from Antoinette Correa from Senegal - both librarians turned publisher, whom I'll be talking about in Part 3...

From the Summer 2009 issue of The ALAN Review, a  journal published by the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English, an interesting short piece by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, with great help for teachers who want to incorporate Africa reading into their classrooms....

Of the eighty-eight medals awarded between 1922 and 2009, none has gone to an author whose story is set in continental Africa. However, three honor books have African settings: Harold Courlander and George Herzog's The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories (1947/74), Nancy Farmer's The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm (1994), and A Girl Named Disaster (1996). The first of the three honor books is a collection of folktales, the second is a science fiction young adult novel,and the third is a realistic fiction novel. 

Back in March we visited "Le Salon du Livre de Paris," where we met Natacha N'Guessan working at the Michel Lafon publishing stand. We discussed their brand new "Bouba et Zaza" series. The nicely illustrated African children's books (available in French and English) help discuss concepts that may be difficult for adults and parents to explain to children. At the end of our conversation, Natacha promised to send us a few copies. True to her word, we recently received a package with 6 different "Bouba et Zaza" books as well as two posters. The books focus on topics such as how to protect oneself from malaria, HIV/AIDS, accepting difference (living with a disability), proper hygiene, cultural identity and more.
We'll rotate the books around the 11 libraries so that each librarian can use them during activities and see the books' popularity. I personally think these books are fantastic and if a FAVL supporter is interested in donating books, they would be a great choice! Check out more at http://michel-lafon-education.com/