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Jay Heale Talks About ‘Darkest Africa’ on Bookchat
The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it,” said George Kimble.
That works both ways. Our South African children are ignorant of countries abroad. They too remain ignorant of Africa. The latter is neatly emphasized by a leading article in the latest (April 2011)issue of Bookbird, the magazine of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People). In this, Daria Mazi-Leskovar, a professor at Maribor University, Slovenia, discusses the image of Africa as portrayed in Slovenian poems for children. It is almost entirely a concept of wild animals: lion, elephant, giraffe. One more enlightened poet writes of a swallow, a migrating bird familiar to Slovenian children. “The author bids goodbye to the tiny bird as it heads for the river Nile, the home of the crocodile, and suggests that it should warn the dangerous animal not to eat children.”
The most frequently mentioned features are the Nile, Mount Kilimanjaro and the Sahara. Top countries are Egypt and Morocco. South Africa, it seems, doesn’t feature much. One longs for Slovenian children to be introduced to a book such as Dear Friends, created by Kerstin Gidfors, Gunilla Lundgren and Per Englund (Tranan Publishing House in co-operation with David Philip 2010) which contains letters and photographs sent by children in South Africa and Sweden to each other. Pictures of African townships and Swedish snow, happy modern families from both countries. Not a lion in sight!
I am equally delighted by Jacana’s new series “Best Loved Tales for Africa” in which well-known stories from Europe are retold in an African setting. (See the Book of the Month which features Sindiwe Magona’s telling of The Ugly Duckling.) A start to showing our children that storytelling is universal and not only a product of Europe.
- Events Calendar
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JulSep 
- PUKU Chat Latest
March 23, 2011, 10:28 am
Nonikiwe - Editor is reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
March 12, 2011, 10:28 pm
lamoesther on Nigerians Shocked at NECO Examination's 2% Pass RateI will rather look at the bigger picture of the [...]
March 3, 2011, 1:19 pm
Chelsea is reading Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
February 8, 2011, 8:00 am
Chelsea is reading An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
December 29, 2010, 2:30 pm
paulineblah on Bontle is reading Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman CapoteHii ( paulineblah@yahoo.in ) I saw your profile today and became [...]
December 29, 2010, 2:29 pm
paulineblah on Nonikiwe - Editor is reading The Seed Children by Bontekanye BotumileHii ( paulineblah@yahoo.in ) I saw your profile today and became [...]
October 27, 2010, 11:46 am
Nonikiwe - Editor is reading The Seed Children by Bontekanye Botumile
September 8, 2010, 11:29 am
Bontle is reading Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
August 27, 2010, 3:31 pm
Coin is reading 1984 by George Orwell
August 27, 2010, 3:21 pm
Coin on Bontle is reading A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee WilliamsHow did you find it?
