Read Africa

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

How often do you make a list for the grocery store and then leave the list at home and have to remember what you wrote down?  That is Fatima’s dilemma in Grandma’s List, a Children’s Africana Book Award winner by Portia Dery, illustrated by Toby Newsome. 

Calling Grandma’s List an excellent read-aloud book, Africa Access Review says the illustrations “show a neighborhood in Ghana that is very typical of many African towns with shops, gardens, small livestock, and many people outside working and playing. Children not familiar with West Africa can learn about palm nut soup, groundnuts (peanuts) and Bissap drink.”

Africa Access highlights the best books about Africa especially during its February Read Africa initiative but throughout the year as well.

Fatima has convinced her grandmother she can help with the chores on Grandma’s list of errands – but she loses the list and has to remember all the details, mixing up just about everything.  Contrary to expectations, Fatima’s family is very forgiving and she concludes that being a child isn’t so bad after all.

This is an excellent book for children to study the illustrations:

·       How does the dinner table look the same as yours? Different?

·       What about the village scene – what looks familiar? Can you draw a picture of your neighborhood on a Saturday morning?

·       Have children write their own list of grocery items or household tasks and imagine they lost the list. Ask them to write a paragraph about how they could help themselves remember items without that list.

·       Encourage children to consider the importance of details. Find out about cornflour – the kind Fatima mistakenly purchased – and write a paragraph about how it is used differently from wheat flour. Try to find a Ghanaian recipe using cornflour (usually called cornstarch in the United States).

·       Fatima doesn’t like her nickname “Fati.”  Do you have a nickname you like – or don’t like? Write about your nickname – or a nickname you would like to have.

There are more classroom ideas in the Africa Access Review of Grandma’s List as well as recommended picture books (Anansi Reads) and chapter books (Sankofa Reads), book marks and reviews of Children’s Africana Book Award winners. 

Children and teachers may add their own comments about the books they read at http://africaaccessreview.org/ - which becomes a student writing activity in itself.  It is also possible for students to submit videos or posters about the books they read, write a letter to the author or illustrator and even request a visit from a Read Africa Teaching Artist. 

 The 2018 CABA awards  will be celebrated with a reception on April 5 and a family festival April 6 at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.  

One Voice Can Change the World

Guest Post by Kathryn Erskine

It’s true ... with incredible determination and persistence, one person really can change the world. I was introduced to the voice of Miriam Makeba, dubbed Mama Africa, during the oppressive apartheid regime. Despite danger to herself and family, she told the world about the atrocities in her country. Singing was her art and talent, and using that, she forced the world to look at what was happening in South Africa, and to do something about it. We may not have her gifts, but we can all be brave. We can all speak out and change the world.

Young people often feel unheard. As a child, especially a girl in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, I took heart that a woman could speak out and that people would actually listen. I loved that she forced everyone to look at, and deal with, what was happening to her people –and not just in South Africa, but in the United States, and anywhere in the world. Her voice gave me hope that I could have a voice, too. I wanted to give that same feeling of empowerment to young readers today.

To that end, here are some writing activities you can use with Mama Africa:

1. Use Miriam’s story as a jumping off point to learn more about her or one of the other people mentioned in the book, like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. Also, see the timeline and Further Reading sections for more ideas, e.g., Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis. What contributions did these people make? What do you think was most important, and why? If you could ask one of these people a question, what would you ask?

2. What is an issue you feel strongly about? How would you use your voice to tell the world? In today’s world, unlike Miriam Makeba’s during the mid-twentieth century, what avenues do you have available to get your message out?

3. Mama Africa can also be used as an introduction to apartheid, and other oppressive regimes, and how such regimes can be called out and, eventually, brought down. What is happening in the world today that is similar to a tyrannical government like South Africa’s under apartheid? What do you think is an effective way to stop that regime?

And, any of the above activities can be written in the call-and-response style used in the book, either as a song or free verse poem, where the last word of the preceding line is also the first word in the following line.

An example from the book:

Still, that doesn’t stop Miriam from singing.

Singing always gives her strength.

Mama Africa: How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song, was named a 2018 Best Book for Young Children by CABA, Children’s Africana Book Awards.  It was also the 2018 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award winner.

Kathryn Erskine is the author of six novels for young people, including National Book Award winner, Mockingbird, Jane Addams Peace Award honor book Seeing Red, and most recently, The Incredible Magic of Being, about a boy with anxiety who believes in the power of the universe to save us. She also recently wrote an award-winning picture book, Mama Africa, a biography of South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba.  Kathryn Erskine draws on her life stories and world events for her writing and is currently working on several more novels and picture books.  Visit her at http://www.kathyerskine.com/

Storytellers -- CABA Awards

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

“There is a unique kind of magic that comes from hearing a story told. With only the power of a voice, an entire world can be created,” writes Evan Turk in the author’s note to the new book he wrote and illustrated, The Storyteller.

The Storyteller is one of this year’s Children’s Africana Book Award (CABA)  winners.  The awards honor books that contribute to an accurate, balanced picture of Africa.  The Storyteller takes place during a drought in the ancient Kingdom of Morocco. Only the power of storytelling is capable of filling everyone’s brass cup with water to share.

Encourage children to write their own story – and then share the stories out loud or with pictures. Talk about what makes a story so exciting that readers or listeners never get bored and keep wanting more.

·       Are there stories or legends you hear at home about the countries or places where your parents or grandparents were born?

·       Can you imagine a story to explain a natural phenomenon – like why fireflies sparkle at night, what the man (or lady) in the moon might be thinking or why pandas love to eat bamboo?

·       Write about a day in your life when something magic happens to you – like the boy in the story whose brass cup is suddenly overflowing with water.

Each of the 2017 CABA books could generate writing prompts – beginning with finding out more about the African country featured in each title.

The 2017 CABA Winners are:

·       Gizo-Gizo! A tale from the Zongo Lagoon (Ghana) by Emily Williamson with the students and teachers of the Hassaniyya Quranic School in Cape Coast Ghana/Sub-Saharan Publishers / available via African Books Collective

·       The Storyteller (Morocco) by Evan Turk/Atheneum

·       Amagama Enkululeko! Words for Freedom: Writing Life Under Apartheid (South Africa) Anthology/Cover2Cover/ available via African Books Collective

2017 CABA Honor Books

·       Aluta (Ghana) by Adwoa Badoe/Groundwood Books

·       The Bitter Side of Sweet (Ivory Coast) by Tara Sullivan/Putnam

·       The Boy Who Spat in Sargrenti’s Eye (Ghana) by Manu Herbstein / self-published for international distribution via Ingram Publishing Services /Techmate in Ghana

2017 CABA Notable Book

·       The World Beneath (South Africa) by Janice Warman/Candlewick

This is the 25^th anniversary of the CABA awards - 90 books set in 24 countries have been recognized since the awards began.  The authors of all seven 2017 winners will receive their awards at a celebration dinner November 3, 2017, in Washington, D.C.   

Ten previous winners are also attending the dinner, including Kathleen Wilson winner of the first CABA, five-time CABA winner E.B. Lewis and two-time winners Liz Zunon, Baba Wague Diakité and Ifeoma Onyefulu.  Ntshadi Mofokeng, representing the NGO Equal Education will be coming from South Africa, author Manu Herbstein will be traveling to the celebration from Ghana, Adwoa Badoe from Canada and Janice Warman from the U.K. Click here for tickets and more information. 

On Saturday, a free CABA family festival will be held at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.  Children can learn to spin a yarn and weave a story, based on tales from Ghana, Morocco and Ivory Coast.  A panel of CABA authors/illustrators is featured and both current and past CABA winners will be signing their books. The event is free and open to the public. More information here. 

“When a storyteller dies, a library burns.” Old Moroccan saying

 https://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

“Literature Teaches Us Empathy”

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

Usually when we talk about diverse books, we mean books that enable children of all ethnic groups to see themselves in the books they read. In this year’s Zena Sutherland lecture, the African-American poet Marilyn Nelson added this notion.

“While reading about characters and experiences we already know is affirming, and while self-affirmation is an important aspect of self-knowledge, literature offers more than the experience of reading in a cubicle with a mirror. Literature allows us to extend our understanding beyond ourselves; it asks us whether we can understand others. Literature teaches us empathy.”

And this year’s Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Yang wants young readers – all of us for that matter – to have empathy with people who are not like us. He is asking children “to read a book about a character who doesn’t look like you or live like you.” He calls it his “Reading Without Walls Challenge.”

Such reading opens the door to countless writing prompts.

· How is the child in the book different from you? What is the same?

· How are your days different or the same?

· What would you like to do with that child if you could meet her?

· What would you show that person if he came to your school?

The next question might be where to find such books – especially good, accurate ones. One answer is to look at awards such as the Children's Africana Book Awards (CABA) - and the African Studies Association’s Teacher’s Workshop Dec 3 in Washington, D.C. - the Middle East Outreach Council, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.

This year’s recently celebrated CABA awards include an exuberantly illustrated folk tale from Nigeria, Chicken in the Kitchen, written by Nnedi Okorafor, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria, and illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini, an Iranian artist living in Great Britain. Elizabeth Wein wrote Black Dove White Raven, a World War II young adult novel about a black boy and a white girl raised together in Ethiopia. Miranda Paul wrote One Plastic Bag and the Recycling Women of the Gambia, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon, about Isatou Ceesay’s efforts to recycle discarded plastic bags in her community. An earlier Pencil Tips Workshop focused on the CABA honor book, Emmanuel’s Dream, written by Laurie Ann Thompson and illustrated by Sean Qualls, about Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboa who was born with a deformed leg yet grew up to play soccer and raise money for people with disabilities in Ghana.

The opportunity to read, think and write about any of these books gives children a chance to deepen their awareness of countries where they may one day live or travel or have a friend – and build pride in their own countries of origin.

http://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

SHARING CULTURES WITH BOOKS

by Karen Leggett

The 2014 winners of the Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA) have been honored this month in Washington, D.C., for writing the best children’s and young adult books on Africa published in the United States. The awards were started by Africa Access and the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association in 1991.

This year’s winners are:

• Desmond Tutu & Douglas Abrams, A.G. Ford (illus.) Desmond and the Very Mean Word  (Candlewick)

• Anna Cottrell & Agbotadua Togbi Kumassah, Kwabena Poku (illus) Once Upon a Time in Ghana (Afram)

• Monica Edinger, Robert Byrd (illus) Africa is My Home:Child of the Amistad (Candlewick)

• Mubina Kirmani, Tony Siema (illus.) Bundle of Secrets: Savita Returns Home (Create Space)

In social studies and language arts classes for any grade level, these books and the many previous award winners offer a perfect opportunity for cultural immersion and compare/contrast writing exercises on a very personal level.  

Ask each child to select one of the award-winning books - encourage your school library to begin collecting the CABA winners - or use other titles that focus on children or families in another country. As they read, children should keep a 3 x 5 card with notes that will enable them to answer three questions. The notes may simply be single words that will jog their memory later.

1.     How is your daily life similar to children in the book?

2.     What is different about your ordinary days and theirs?

3.     If you went to the country portrayed in the book, what would you most want to see or do?

Children may discover different ways of cooking a meal or cleaning clothes but they may also find what they have in common.  During a Skype session I moderated with American and Egyptian fourth graders, an American boy asked, “What is your favorite food?”  An Egyptian girl answered without hesitation, “pizza and hamburgers,” bringing surprised giggles and a palpable sense of connected-ness between children thousands of miles apart. 

If you want to expand the experience, find authors in other countries who want to do the same by visiting Skype in the Classroom or Global Friends.  The Africa Access website also has many teaching resources.

http://africaaccessreview.org/lessons/