Recently in Making Books Category

FAVL volunteer Chelsea Rangel spent three months in Burkina Faso doing some amazing things in the library. One of her jobs was to pilot a new program we're working on for volunteers to produce "microbooks" that will be printed in very small runs, and will be very relevant to the local readers. Chelsea worked with the librarians and village residents to produce three books. The text is in French and Dioula, a language spoken by several million people in the region (also known as Bamana), but there are very few books in the Burkinabè version of Dioula. Volunteers Kathryn Ranney and Amy Reggio helped a lot with post-production, and the Santa Clara Rotary Club helped with a grant to cover most of the printing costs. Moquin Press up in Belmont, CA is about to print them up... here's some images. Charlie Wasser was great as the intermediary to lots of stuff to make this happen. We couldn't have done it without the constant encouragement of Kathy Knowles at Osu Children's Library Fund. To all... thanks!!!! These books will end up costing about $5 each, because of the limited small print run. Very few people in rural villages can afford to purchase a book at that price. The average daily wage in a village is something like 50 cents, so $5 is ten days of work. So we depend on grants like the one from Rotary and your generosity to be able to get these books to kids who will read them. Over and over again, in all likelihood.

FAVL worked with Kathy Knowles of Osu Children's Library Fund to translate into Dioula and print copies of her beautiful Red, Blue, Green and Yellow "I like..." books. Prof. Ada Giusti from Montana State University writes:

I just returned from a trip to Mali with my students. While we were in a village called Sanambele, I shared your beautiful books with the children and teachers. They were so appreciated! Children of all ages kept on asking me to see the books over and over again. They could read the words because they spoke Bambara. If you get on this link, you will see many pictures of Malian children reading the books (which I donated to the school of course).

Some photos from coordinator Viviane Nabie's visit to the libraries last week, where copies are now available of the Africa-oriented children's magazine Planete Jeune (thanks to Emily H-W in Wisconsin!) and a color series of books (I like Red, I like Yellow, with text in Dioula, the lingua franca of southwestern Burkina Faso). The color books feature photographs by Kathy Knowles of Osu Children's Library Fund. They really are spectacular! Osu also generously helped FAVL with a lot of the publication cost; Osu has translated the series into other languages also. Some of you, like San Jose resident Laura Wolford, are helping with shipping costs- thanks!