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Recently in Making Books Category
I just got off a Skype call with Amy Reggio and Madelyn Bagby, two university students spending part of the summer working with the libraries in Burkina. They just returned from about 10 days in the villages. Everything went splendidly, and in particular they did a lot of reading with kids, including Crocodile Bread. They also took a lot of photos, and now will prepare a number of books: mothers and daughters working together in the village; a profile of the village midwife; girls and their favorite books. They are also preparing a book on their travels in Dogon country, which should be really neat. So expect to see some great children's books in the coming months. Someone had asked me some time ago about a $200 project, and here it is: $200 will pay for about 50 copies of one of these books, which would mean we could get it to many more libraries in Burkina. So if you want to donate to produce books (and we'll send you a signed copy of one of the books! how's that for an incentive) make your check out to FAVL and write "Microbook production, Burkina" in the memo line.
Sare Eisee, FAVL Ouaga rep., is on his way back from Bolgatanga, Ghana with 400 copies of the Dioula and French translation of Crocodile Bread. Elisee did the French translation, and helped on the Dioula. Kathy Knowles, of Osu Children's Library Fund, did another superb job in conceiving and creating the book, and also finding the funding to print so many copies- thank you OCLF!!!! The book is very cute. My kids both got a big kick out of it, and the kids in the libraries in burkina are also going to enjoy it immensely. Hope the border police don't like it too much, though.
(My apologies for the scan that cut off Kathy's name.)
It is worth reflecting on the American book trade of the 19th century... A fine place to start is Sarah Wadsworth. In the Company of Books: Literature and Its "Classes" in Nineteenth-Century America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. xiii + 278 pp. $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-55849-540-1; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-55849-541-8.
An extract from Donald K. Pickens' review on H-Net:
An extract from Donald K. Pickens' review on H-Net:
One of the delightful surprises of Wadsworth's text is her analysis of Louisa May Alcott's career. Alcott was more than the sweet narrative that is Little Women. This is no criticism of the novel, but a recognition that Alcott, more than Twain, was creatively able to move in this segmented market, producing sequels that sold (p. 46). She knew her readers and, like the other literary artists discussed in In the Company of Books, Alcott wanted to write beyond the social expectation of the market.
Wadsworth's treatment of the connotation of "high brow"/"low brow" is balanced. There was a "near obsession with the cultural status of books, reading, and various types of readers" (p. 98). Publishers overran the market with cheap material. Critics claimed "cheap," in both senses of the word. By subscription and by a series of volumes such as "Blue and Gold," the coffee table book made its appearance. Some of these (and it is true to this day) were to be seen but not read. By century's end the door-to-door subscription had come to the end. The most successful example of that marketing device was Twain's help in selling U.S. Grant's account of the Civil War.
FAVL Ouaga rep SARE Elisée has been busy translating into French and Dioula (with Adama Sougoué) a new children's book by Kathy Knowles, director of Osu Children's Library Fund. It is a very cute book, and will also be available in English. Check out the OCLF website for forthcoming details!
Books of Hope is a service-learning program where U.S. schools sponsor a school abroad and create books to help meet the students' educational needs. We provide teachers with information about their sponsored school and instructional materials to help facilitate the project. Along with writing, illustrating and binding books, schools also have the option of collecting and sending other supplies for their sponsored school.
Books of Hope is an ideal way to incorporate service into practically any unit of any classroom at any level. We encourage schools to create books about science, math, geography, reading readiness, English grammar, and a whole variety of other topics.
Over 50,000 students, teachers, parents and community members from over 1000 schools across the country have been involved in the Books of Hope program. During the 2007-8 school year, we collected over 10,000 pounds of books and next year we hope to double that.
November 3, 2008
Deborah Ahenkorah '10
As a child, Deborah Ahenkorah ’10 was a voracious reader; she practically wore out her library card. But despite the fact that she was born and educated through secondary school in the West African nation of Ghana, she had little opportunity to read the work of African authors until she took a course in African literature here at Bryn Mawr.
Young readers’ lack of access to African literature is a problem, Ahenkorah explains: “Without access to books by and about Africans, young people grow up not knowing much about the diverse cultures of their vast continent. And especially when all they read is Western literature, they have very little reason to feel proud of their national identities and continental heritage.”
The government of Mali has made desultory attempts over the years to teach primary schooling in Bamanankan [Bambara], the main national language. (Instruction has been and continues to be largely in French.) Skattum in a 2006 article in Mande Studies notes that one problem is:
Sukie, by the way, proudly spelled "bib" and "run" on her Etch-a-Sketch this morning. She "sounded them out." It is so much more interesting to be thinking of literacy issues in developing countries when you run your own experimental literacy lab at home ;-)
Bambara and other national languages remain essentially oral languages, and the pupils do not see, so to speak, any printed Bambara that would permit them to internalise its spelling.This simple fact is so stunning in the light of a Malian government policy to have about 2,000 schools teach the first years in Bambara, knowing full-well that there was no reading material for the students to read in Bambara!
Sukie, by the way, proudly spelled "bib" and "run" on her Etch-a-Sketch this morning. She "sounded them out." It is so much more interesting to be thinking of literacy issues in developing countries when you run your own experimental literacy lab at home ;-)
